bjected him to a charge of treason. He could have only one motive for
thus deceiving his Majesty. Thus the plot _had_ to go on, even under
circumstances very unfavourable. There was no place for repentance.

Thus considered, the conspiracy looks like the plot of a romance, not
without meritorious points, but painfully amateurish.

As proof of Gowrie's guilt, the evidence, I think, distinctly proves that
he intentionally concealed from those about him the ride of his brother,
Henderson, and Andrew Ruthven to Perth; that he concealed his knowledge,
derived from Henderson, of the King's approach; and that Ruthven
concealed from Craigengelt, on his return, his long ride to Falkland,
saying that he had been on 'an errand not far off.' Moncrieff swore that
Henderson gave him a similar answer. Asked by Moncrieff where he had
been, he said 'he had been two or three miles above the town.' Henderson
corroborated Moncrieff's evidence on this point. There can have been no
innocent motive for all this secrecy. It would have been natural for
Gowrie to order luncheon for the King to be prepared, as soon as
Henderson arrived.

Finally, the Earl's assertions that James had ridden away, assertions
repeated after he had gone upstairs to inquire and make sure, are
absolutely incompatible with innocence. They could have only one motive,
to induce the courtiers to ride off and leave the King in his hands.

What was to happen next? Who can guess at the plot of such a plotter?
It is perhaps least improbable that the King was to be conveyed secretly,
by sea or across Fife, to Dirleton in the first place. Gowrie may have
had an understanding with Guevara at Berwick. James himself told
Nicholson that a large English ship had hovered off the coast, refusing
communication with the shore. Bothwell, again, now desperate, may have
lately been nearer home than was known; finally, Fastcastle, the isolated
eyrie on its perpendicular rock above the Northern Sea, may have been at
Gowrie's disposal. I am disinclined to conjecture, being only certain
that a young man with Gowrie's past--'Italianate,' and of dubious
religion--was more apt to form a wild and daring plot than was his canny
senior, the King of Scots. But that a plot of some kind Gowrie had laid,
I am convinced by his secrecy, and by his falsehoods as to the King's
departure. Among the traps for the King contrived by Bothwell and
Colville, and reported by Colville to his English