paymasters, were
schemes quite as wild as that which Gowrie probably entertained. The
King once in the pious hands of so godly a man as Gowrie, the party of
the Kirk, or the party of the Church, would have come in and made
themselves useful. {147}

XII. LOGAN OF RESTALRIG

We now arrive at an extraordinary sequel of the Gowrie mystery: a sequel
in which some critics have seen final and documentary proof of the guilt
of the Ruthvens. Others have remarked only a squalid intrigue, whereby
James's ministers threw additional disgrace on their master. That they
succeeded in disgracing themselves, we shall make only too apparent, but
if the evidence which they handled proves nothing against the Ruthvens,
it does not on that account invalidate the inferences which we have drawn
as to their conspiracy. We come to the story of the Laird and the
country writer.

That we may know the Laird better, a brief description of his home may be
introduced. Within a mile and a half of the east end of Princes Street,
Edinburgh, lies, on the left of the railway to the south, a squalid
suburb. You drive or walk on a dirty road, north-eastwards, through
unambitious shops, factories, tall chimneys, flaming advertisements, and
houses for artisans. The road climbs a hill, and you begin to find, on
each side of you, walls of ancient construction, and traces of great old
doorways, now condemned. On the left are ploughed fields, and even
clumps of trees with blackened trunks. Grimy are the stacks of corn in
the farmyard to the left, at the crest of the hill. On the right, a
gateway gives on a short avenue which leads to a substantial modern
house. Having reached this point in my pilgrimage, I met a gentleman who
occupies the house, and asked if I might be permitted to view the site.
The other, with much courtesy, took me up to the house, of which only the
portion in view from the road was modern. Facing the west all was of the
old Scottish chateau style, with gables, narrow windows, and a strange
bulky chimney on the north, bulging out of the wall. The west side of
the house stood on the very brink of a steep precipice, beneath which lay
what is now but a large deep waterhole, but, at the period of the Gowrie
conspiracy, was a loch fringed with water weeds, and a haunt of wild
fowl. By this loch, Restalrig Loch, the witch more than three centuries
ago met the ghost of Tam Reid, who fell in Pinkie fight, and by the ghost
was