ative? Logan was at Gunnisgreen (his
letter (IV) proves it) on July 29. (Later we show another error of
Sprot's on this point.) He writes that he is sending Bower as bearer of
his letter to Gowrie. If Bower left Edinburgh on July 30, he could
deliver the letter to Gowrie, at Perth, on August 2, and be back in
Edinburgh (whither Logan now went) on August 5, and Logan could leave
Edinburgh on August 6, after hearing of the deaths of his
fellow-conspirators. We must not press Sprot too hard as to dates so
remote in time. We may grant that Bower, bearing Logan's letter of July
29, rode with Logan and the others to Edinburgh; that at Edinburgh Logan
awaited his return, with a reply; that he thence learned that August 5
was the day for the enterprise, and that, early on August 6, he heard of
its failure, and rode sadly home: all this being granted for the sake of
argument.

Had the news of August 6 been that the King had mysteriously disappeared,
we may conceive that Logan would have hurried to Dirleton, met the
Ruthvens there, with their prisoner, and sailed with them to Fastcastle.
Or he might have made direct to Fastcastle, and welcomed them there. His
reason for being at Restalrig or in the Canongate was to get the earliest
news from Perth, brought across Fife, and from Bruntisland to Leith.

Whether correct or not, this scheme, allowing for lapse of memory as to
dates, is feasible. Who can, remote from any documents, remember the
dates of occurrences all through a month now distant by eight years?
There were no daily newspapers, no ready means of ascertaining a date.
Queen Mary's accusers, in their chronological account of her movements
about the time of Darnley's death, are often out in their dates. In
legal documents of the period the date of the day of the month of an
event is often left blank. This occurs in the confirmation of Logan's
own will. 'He died --- July, 1606.' When lawyers with plenty of leisure
for inquiry were thus at a loss for dates of days of the month (having
since the Reformation no Saints' days to go by), Sprot, in prison, might
easily go wrong in his chronology.

[Picture: Fastcastle]

In any case, taking Letter IV provisionally as genuine in substance, we
note that, on July 29, Logan did not yet know the date fixed for Gowrie's
enterprise. He suggested 'the beginning of harvest,' and, by August 5,
harvest had begun. One of the Perth witnesses was reaping