ts we hear that, in a very dry summer,
the timbers of a crannog were found in the sandy deposit of the lake
margin. The chapel (or chapter-house?), very dirty and disgracefully
neglected, has probably a crypt under it, and certainly possesses a
beautiful groined roof, springing from a single short pillar in the
centre. The windows are blocked up with stones, the exterior is a mere
mound of grass like a sepulchral tumulus. On the floor lies, broken, the
gravestone of a Lady Restalrig who died in 1526. Outside is a patched-up
church; the General Assembly of 1560 decreed that the church should be
destroyed as 'a monument of idolatry' (it was a collegiate church, with a
dean, and prebendaries), and in 1571 the wrought stones were used to
build a new gate inside the Netherbow Port. The whole edifice was not
destroyed, but was patched up, in 1836, into a Presbyterian place of
worship. This old village and kirk made up 'Restalrig Town,' a place
occupied by the English during the siege of Leith in 1560. So much of
history may be found in this odd corner, where the sexton of the kirk
speaks to the visitor about 'the Great Logan,' meaning that Laird who now
comes into the sequel of the Gowrie mystery.

For some thirty years before the date of which we are speaking, a Robert
Logan had been laird of Restalrig, and of the estate of Flemington, in
Berwickshire, where his residence was the house of Gunnisgreen, near
Eyemouth, on the Berwickshire coast. He must have been a young boy when,
in 1560, the English forces besieging Leith (then held by the French for
Mary of Guise) pitched their camp at Restalrig.

In 1573, Kirkcaldy of Grange and Maitland of Lethington gallantly held
the last strength of the captive Mary Stuart, the Castle of Edinburgh.
The fortress was to fall under the guns of the English allies of that
Earl of Gowrie (then Lord Ruthven), who was the father of the Gowrie of
our mystery.

On April 17, 1573, a compact was made between Lord Ruthven and Drury, the
English general. One provision was (the rest do not here concern us)
that Alexander, Lord Home; Lethington; and Robert Logan of Restalrig, if
captured, 'shall be reserved to be justified by the laws of Scotland,'
which means, hanged by the neck. But neither on that nor on any other
occasion was our Logan hanged. {152} He somehow escaped death and
forfeiture, when Kirkcaldy was gibbeted after the fall of the castle. In
1577, we find him, with Lord Lindsa