t, outside the gate, a turret window
above them opened, and the King looked forth, much agitated, shouting
'Treason!' and crying for help to Mar. With Lennox and most of the
others, Mar ran to the rescue up the main staircase of the house,
where they were stopped by a locked door, which they could not break
open. Gowrie had not gone with his guests to aid the King; he was
standing in the street, asking, 'What is the matter? I know nothing;'
when two of the King's household, Thomas and James Erskine, tried to
seize him, the 'treason' being perpetrated under Gowrie's own roof.
_His_ friends drove the Erskines off, and some of the Murrays of
Tullibardine, who were attending a wedding in Perth, surrounded him.
Gowrie retreated, drew a pair of 'twin swords,' and, accompanied by
Cranstoun and others, made his way into the quadrangle of his house.
At the foot of a small dark staircase they saw the body of a man
lying--wounded or dead. Cranstoun now rushed up the dark stairs,
followed by Gowrie, two Ruthvens, Hew Moncrieff, Patrick Eviot, and
perhaps others. At the head of the narrow spiral stair they found, in
a room called the Gallery Chamber, Sir Thomas Erskine, a lame Dr.
Herries, a young gentleman of the Royal Household named John Ramsay,
and Wilson, a servant, with drawn swords. A fight began; Cranstoun was
wounded; he and his friends fled, leaving Gowrie, who had been run
through the body by Ramsay. All this while the other door of the long
Gallery Chamber was ringing under the hammer-strokes of Lennox and his
company, and the town bell was summoning the citizens. Erskine and
Ramsay now locked the door opening on the narrow stair, at which the
retainers of Gowrie struck with axes. The King's party, by means of a
hammer handed by their friends through a hole in the other door of the
gallery, forced the lock, and admitted Lennox, Mar, and the rest of
the King's retinue. They let James out of a small turret opening from
the Gallery Chamber, and, after some dealings with the angry mob and
the magistrates of Perth, they conveyed the King to Falkland after
nightfall.

The whole results were the death of Gowrie and of his brother, the
Master (his body it was that lay at the foot of the narrow staircase),
and a few wounds to Ramsay, Dr. Herries, and some of Gowrie's
retainers.

The death of the Master of Ruthven was explained thus:--When James
cried 'Treason!' young Ramsay, from the stable door, had heard his
voice, but not h