more. Probably, after they left him, he told, to a minister or a
servant in the gaol, the fact that he had used, as his model, a letter
from Logan to Gowrie. The result was that he did again see, on August
10, the Lords of the Council, who asked him 'where the letter now was.'
This is Letter IV, the letter of Logan to Gowrie, of July 29, 1600.
Sprot, in place of answering directly, cited from memory, and
erroneously, the opening of the letter. He had read it, while it was
still unfinished, in July 1600, at Fastcastle. Logan, who had been
writing it, was called by Bower, went out, and thrust it between a bench
and the wall: there Sprot found, read, and restored the unfinished
epistle to its place. But the letter is dated 'from Gunnisgreen,' at the
conclusion. Logan, according to Sprot, left Gunnisgreen one day at the
end of July, 1600, or beginning of August, thence rode to Fastcastle, and
thence, next day, to Edinburgh (p. 190).

Now Logan, in the letter (IV), says that he took two days to write it.
One day would be at Fastcastle, when he was interrupted; the other, the
day of dating, at Gunnisgreen. This, however, does not tally with
Sprot's account (p. 190) of Logan's movements (Nine Wells, Gunnisgreen,
Fastcastle, Edinburgh), if these are the days of writing Letter IV. Yet,
if Sprot forged Letter IV, he knew where he dated it from; {221} if the
Government had it forged, they knew, from Sprot's confession, that it
should have been dated from Fastcastle. Perhaps we should not bear too
heavily on this point. A man may mention the wrong name by inadvertence,
or the clerk, by inadvertence, may write the wrong name. Mr. Mark Napier
in his essay on this matter twice or thrice prints 'Logan' for 'Sprot,'
or 'Sprot' for 'Logan.' {222} 'Fastcastle,' in Sprot's confession, may
be a slip of tongue or pen for 'Gunnisgreen,' or he may have been
confused among the movements to and from Gunnisgreen and Fastcastle. The
present writer finds similar errors in the manuscript of this work.

Sprot next alleged that, three months after the Gowrie affair, Logan bade
Bower hunt among his papers for this very letter. He had been at
Berwick, with Lord Willoughby, and Bower told Sprot that he was 'taking
order' with all who knew of his part in the Gowrie plot. Here is the old
difficulty. Why was the letter kept for one moment after Bower brought
it back? Why leave it with Bower for three months? At all events, as
Bower could