ting many spectators, he has, somehow,
locked the door leading into the gallery, while giving Ramsay a hint
to wait outside of the house, within hearing, and to come up by the
back staircase, which was built in a conspicuous tower.

The rest is easy. Gowrie may bring up as many men as he pleases, but
Ramsay has had orders to horrify him by saying that the King is slain
(this was alleged), and then to run him through as he gives ground, or
drops his points; this after a decent form of resistance, in which
three of the King's four men are wounded.

'Master of the human heart,' like Lord Bateman, James knows that
Ruthven will not merely leave him, when goaded by insult, and that
Gowrie, hearing of his brother's death, will not simply stand in the
street and summon the citizens.

To secure a witness to the truth of his false version of the matter
James must have begun by artfully bribing Henderson, Gowrie's steward,
either simply to run away, and then come in later with corroboration,
or actually to be present in the turret, and then escape. Or perhaps
the King told his man-in-the-turret tale merely 'in the air;' and then
Henderson, having run away in causeless panic, later 'sees money in
it,' and appears, with a string of falsehoods. 'Chance loves Art,'
says Aristotle, and chance might well befriend an artist so capable
and conscientious as his Majesty. To be sure Mr. Hill Burton says 'the
theory that the whole was a plot of the Court to ruin the powerful
House of Gowrie must at once, after a calm weighing of the evidence,
be dismissed as beyond the range of sane conclusions. Those who formed
it had to put one of the very last men in the world to accept of such
a destiny into the position of an unarmed man who, without any
preparation, was to render himself into the hands of his armed
adversaries, and cause a succession of surprises and acts of violence,
which, by his own courage and dexterity, he would rule to a determined
and preconcerted plan.'[14]

[Footnote 14: Burton, _History of Scotland_, v. 336.]

If there was a royal plot, _without a plan_, then James merely
intended to raise a brawl and 'go it blind.' This, however, is almost
beyond the King's habitual and romantic recklessness. We must prefer
the theory of a subtly concerted and ably conducted plan, constructed
with alternatives, so that, if one string breaks, another will hold
fast. That plan, to the best of my poor powers, I have explained.

To drop th