Tavern-drinking, now almost unknown among the educated and professional classes of Edinburgh, was then carried by all ranks to a dreadful excess.
Murray was conducted by Hunter to his father's house of Eskmount in Forfarshire, where he was most cordially received, and in accordance with the custom of the times the hospitality included invitations to drinking bouts at the neighbouring houses.
An unenviable notoriety in this respect attached to William Maule (created Baron Panmure 1831).

He was the second son of the eighth Earl of Dalhousie, but on succeeding, through his grandmother, to the estates of the Earls of Panmure, he had assumed the name of Maule in lieu of that of Ramsay.
Much against his will, Murray was compelled to take part in some of these riotous festivities with the rollicking, hard-drinking Forfarshire lairds, and doubtless he was not sorry to make his escape at length uninjured, if not unscathed, and to return to more congenial society in Edinburgh.

His attachment to Miss Elliot ended in an engagement.
In the course of his correspondence with Miss Elliot's trustees, Mr.
Murray gave a statement of his actual financial position at the time: "When I say," he wrote, "that my capital in business amounts to five thousand pounds, I meant it to be understood that if I quitted business to-morrow, the whole of my property being sold, even disadvantageously, it would leave a balance in my favour, free from debt or any incumbrance, of the sum above specified.

But you will observe that, continuing it as I shall do in business, I know it to be far more considerable and productive.

I will hope that it has not been thought uncandid in me if I did not earlier specify the amount of my circumstances, for I considered that I had done this in the most delicate and satisfactory way when I took the liberty of referring you to Mr.Constable to whom I consequently disclosed my affairs, and whose knowledge of my connexions in business might I thought have operated more pleasingly to Miss Elliot's friends than any communication from myself." The correspondence with Miss Elliot went on, and at length it was arranged that Mr.Murray should proceed to Edinburgh for the marriage.
He went by mail in the month of February.