o that Gowrie shall go towards the stables (where he expects to
find his horse, though he knows it is at Scone), thus coming within
earshot of the turret window. Thence James shouts to Gowrie that
traitors are murdering him, and have murdered the Master. Now this news
would bring, not only Gowrie, but all the Royal retinue, to his Majesty's
assistance. But, as not knowing the topography of the house, the
retinue, James must have calculated, will run up the main stairs, to
rescue the King. Their arrival would be inconvenient to the King (as the
nobles would find that James has only friends with him, not traitors), so
the King has had the door locked (we guess, though we are not told this
by the apologist) to keep out Lennox, Mar, and the rest. Gowrie,
however, has to be admitted, and killed, and Gowrie, knowing the house,
will come, the King calculates, by the dark stair, and the unlocked door.
Therefore James's friends, in the street, will let him and Cranstoun
enter the house; these two alone, and no others with them. They, knowing
the narrow staircase, go up that way, naturally. As naturally, Gowrie
lets Cranstoun face the danger of four hostile swords, alone. Waiting
till Cranstoun is disabled, Gowrie then confronts, alone, the same
murderous blades, is disarmed by a _ruse_, and is murdered.

This explanation has a method, a system. Unfortunately it is
contradicted by all the evidence now to be obtained, from whatever source
it comes, retainers of Gowrie, companions of James, or burgesses of
Perth. We must suppose that Gowrie, with his small force of himself and
Cranstoun, both fencers from the foreign schools, would allow that force
to be cut off in detail, one by one. We must suppose that Erskine was
where he certainly was not, in two places at once, and that Ramsay and
Herries and he, unseen, left the hall and joined the King, on a message
brought by the Master, unmarked by any witness. We must suppose that the
King's witnesses, who professed ignorance on essential points, perjured
themselves on others, in batches. But, if we grant that Mar, Lennox, and
the rest--gentlemen, servants, retainers and menials of the Ruthvens, and
citizens of Perth--were abandoned perjurers on some points, while
scrupulously honourable on others equally essential, the narrative of the
Ruthven apologist has a method, a consistency, which we do not find in
modern systems unfavourable to the King.

For example, the modern the