ng, and why, having kept it back, did he, almost in his last hour,
produce it, and say (if he did) that it was genuine, and his model, as it
certainly was? This is the last enigma of Sprot. His motives defy my
poor efforts to decipher them. Even if the substance of IV is genuine,
what were Sprot's motives? I do not feel assured that Sprot really
maintained the genuineness of the _handwriting_ of Letter IV. His remark
that he kept Logan's letter only _till_ he forged others on it, as a
model, certainly implies that he did not keep it _after_ he had done his
forgeries, and therefore that our Letter IV is, confessedly, _not_
Logan's original. Certainly it is not.

XVI. WHAT IS LETTER IV?

The crucial question now arises, _What is Letter IV_? If it be genuine
(in substance), then, whatever the details of the Gowrie Conspiracy may
have been, a conspiracy there was. This can only be denied by ignorance.
If the enterprise fails, says the author of Letter IV, the plotters will
lose their lives, their lands and houses will be 'wrecked,' their very
names will be extirpated; and, in fact, James did threaten to extirpate
the name of Ruthven. The letter deliberately means High Treason. The
objection of Calderwood, and of all the Ruthven apologists, that Sprot
confessed to having forged _all_ the letters, we have shown to rest on
lack of information. He said, at last, that he had forged many papers
(some did not appear in Court in 1609), and that he forged _three_
letters on the model of Letter IV. These three letters may either be I,
III, and V; or III, V, and the torn letter. The case of Letter I is
peculiar. Though it contains much that is in Letter IV, and might have
been taken from it, the repetitions need not imply copying from Letter
IV. Byron and others would say the same things, on the same day, to two
or three correspondents. Letter IV is subsequent, as dated, to Letter I,
and Logan might say to the Unknown, on July 18, what, after the announced
interval of ten days, he said to Gowrie. Letter I contains this remark
on the nature of the plot: 'It is not far by' (not unlike) 'that form,
with the like stratagem, whereof we had conference in Cap. h,' which may
be Capheaton, on the English side of the Border. Probably Logan often
discussed ingenious ways of catching the King: new plots were hatched
about once a month, as Cecil's and the other correspondence of the age
abundantly proves. The plot (the