usly told, 'the
reports so fighting together that no man could have any certainty'?
Where lay the actual truth?

This problem, with which the following pages are concerned, is much
darker and more complex than that of the guilty 'Casket Letters'
attributed to Mary, Queen of Scots. The Queen did write these, in the
madness of a criminal passion; or she wrote parts of them, the rest being
garbled or forged. In either case, her motives, and the motives of the
possible forgers, are distinct, and are human. The Queen was in love
with one man, and hated another to the death; or her enemies desired to
prove that these were her moods. Absolute certainty escapes us, but,
either way, motives and purposes are intelligible.

Not so with the Gowrie mystery. The King, Mary's son, after hunting for
four hours, rides to visit Lord Gowrie, a neighbour. After luncheon,
that nobleman and his brother are slain, in their own house, by the
King's attendants. The King gives his version of the events instantly;
he never varies from it in any essential point, but the story is almost
incredible. On the other hand, the slain men cannot speak, and only one
of them, if both were innocent, could have told what occurred. But one
of their apologists, at the time, produced a version of the events which
is, beyond all doubt, boldly mendacious. It was easy to criticise and
ridicule the King's version; but the opposite version, hitherto unknown
to historians, destroys itself by its conspicuous falsehoods. In the
nature of the case, as will appear, no story accounting for such wild
events could be easily credible, so extraordinary, motiveless, and
inexplicable do the circumstances appear. If we try the theory that the
King wove a plot, we are met by the fact that his plot could not have
succeeded without the voluntary and vehement collaboration of one of his
victims, a thing that no man could have reckoned on. If we adopt the
idea that the victims had laid a trap for the King, we have only a vague
surmise as to its aim, purpose, and method. The later light which seemed
to fall on the affair, as we shall see, only darkens what was already
obscure. The inconceivable iniquity of the Government, at a later date,
reflects such discredit on all concerned on their side, that we might
naturally, though illogically, be inclined to believe that, from the
first, the King was the conspirator. But _that_, we shall find, was
almost, or quite, a physical