boyish
dreams of vengeance and ambition? All this appears not improbable, and
would, if true, explain all; but evidence is defective. Had Gowrie
really cherished the legacy of revenge for a father slain, and a mother
insulted; had he studied the subtleties of Italian crime, pondered over
an Italian plot till it seemed feasible, and communicated his vision to
the boy brother whom he found at home--the mystery would be transparent.

[Picture: James VI]

As to King James, we know him well. The babe 'wronged in his mother's
womb;' threatened by conspirators before his birth; terrified by a harsh
tutor as a child; bullied; preached at; captured; insulted; ruled now by
debauched favourites, now by godly ruffians; James naturally grew up a
dissembler, and betrayed his father's murderer with a kiss. He was
frightened into deceit: he could be cruel; he became, as far as he might,
a tyrant. But, though not the abject coward of tradition, James (as he
himself observed) was never the man to risk his life in a doubtful brawl,
on the chance that his enemies might perish while he escaped. For him a
treachery of that kind, an affair of sword and dagger fights on
staircases and in turrets and chambers, in the midst of a town of
doubtful loyalty, had certainly no attractions. Moreover, he had a sense
of humour. This has been the opinion of our best historians, Scott, Mr.
Tytler, and Mr. Hill Burton; but enthusiastic writers have always
espoused the cause of the victims, the Ruthvens, so young, brave,
handsome; so untimely slain, as it were on their own hearthstone. Other
authors, such as Dr. Masson in our own day, and Mr. S. R. Gardiner, have
abstained from a verdict, or have attempted the _via media_; have leaned
to the idea that the Ruthvens died in an accidental brawl, caused by a
nervous and motiveless fit of terror on the part of the King. Thus the
question is unsettled, the problem is unsolved. Why did the jolly hunt
at Falkland, in the bright August morning, end in the sanguinary scuffle
in the town house at Perth; the deaths of the Ruthvens; the tumult in the
town; the King's homeward ride through the dark and dripping twilight;
the laying of the dead brothers side by side, while the old family
servant weeps above their bodies; and the wailing of the Queen and her
ladies in Falkland Palace, when the torches guide the cavalcade into the
palace court, and the strange tale of slaughter is vario