ader must form his own opinion, on literary grounds,
and no opinion is of much value. Such is a brief summary of the facts.
But the tenacious inquirer who can follow us through the tangled mazes of
Sprot's private confessions, will perhaps agree with me that they contain
distinguishable grains of fact, raising a strong surmise that Logan was
really involved with Gowrie in a plot. Yet this, again, is a subjective
impression, which may vary with each reader.

XIII. THE SECRETS OF SPROT

The final and deepest mystery of the mysterious Gowrie affair rises, like
a mist from a marsh, out of these facts concerning Sprot. When he was
convicted, and hanged, persisting in his confessions, on August 12, 1608,
no letters by Gowrie, or any other conspirator, were produced in Court.
Extracts, however, of a letter from Gowrie to Logan, and of one from
Logan to Gowrie, were quoted in Sprot's formal Indictment. They were
also quoted in an official publication, an account of Sprot's case,
prepared by Sir William Hart, the Chief Justice, and issued in 1608.
Both these documents (to which we return) are given by Mr. Pitcairn, in
the second volume of his 'Criminal Trials.' But later, when the dead
Logan was tried in 1609, five of his alleged plot letters (never
_publicly_ mentioned in Sprot's trial) were produced by the prosecution,
and not one of these was identical with the letter of Logan cited in the
Indictment of Sprot, and in the official account of his trial. There
were strong resemblances between Logan's letter, quoted but not produced,
in 1608, and a letter of Logan's produced, and attested to be in his
handwriting, in 1609. But there were also remarkable variations.

Of these undeniable facts most modern historians who were convinced of
the guilt of the Ruthvens take no notice; though the inexplicable
discrepancies between the Logan letters _quoted_ in 1608, and the letters
_produced_ as his in 1609, had always been matters of comment and
criticism.

As to the letters of 1609, Mr. Tytler wrote, 'their import cannot be
mistaken; _their authenticity has never been questioned_; they still
exist . . . ' Now assuredly the letters exist. The five alleged
originals were found by Mr. Pitcairn, among the Warrants of Parliament,
in the General Register House, in Edinburgh, and were published by him,
but without their endorsements, in his 'Criminal Trials' in Scotland.
(1832). {169} Copies of the letters are also 'booki