The Master was now in a quandary:  he had no prisoner and no pot of gold.  During dinner Gowrie was very nervous; after it James and the Master slipped upstairs together while Gowrie took the gentlemen into the garden to eat cherries.  Ruthven finally led James into a turret off the long gallery; he locked the door, and pointing to a man in armour with a dagger, said that he “had the king at his will.”  The man, however, fell a-trembling, James made a speech, and the Master went to seek Gowrie, locking the door behind him.  At or about this moment, as was fully attested, Cranstoun, a retainer of Gowrie, reported to him and the gentlemen that the king had ridden away.  They all rushed to the gate, where the porter, to whom Gowrie gave the lie, swore that the king had not left the place.  The gentlemen going to the stables passed under the turret-window, whence appeared the king, red in the face, bellowing “treason!” The gentlemen, with Lennox, rushed upstairs, and through the gallery, but could not force open the door giving on the turret.  But young Ramsay had run up a narrow stair in the tower, burst open the turret-door opening on the stair, found James struggling with the Master, wounded the Master, and pushed him downstairs.  In the confusion, while the king’s falcon flew wildly about the turret till James set his foot on its chain, the man with the dagger vanished.  The Master was slain by two of James’s attendants; the Earl, rushing with four or five men up the turret-stair, fell in fight by Ramsay’s rapier.

Lennox and his company now broke through the door between the gallery and the turret, and all was over except a riotous assemblage of the town’s folk.  The man with the dagger had fled:  he later came in and gave himself up; he was Gowrie’s steward; his name was Henderson; it was he who rode with the Master to Falkland and back to Perth to warn Gowrie of James’s approach.  He confessed that Gowrie had then bidden him put on armour, on a false pretence, and the Master had stationed him in the turret.  The fact that Henderson had arrived (from Falkland) at Gowrie’s house by half-past ten was amply proved, yet Gowrie had made no preparations for the royal visit.  If Henderson was not the man in the turret, his sudden and secret flight from Perth is unexplained.  Moreover, Robert Oliphant, M.A., said, in private talk, that the part of the man in the turret had, some time earlier, been offered to him by Gowrie; he refused and left the Earl’s service.  It is manifest that James could not have arranged this set of circumstances:  the thing is impossible.  Therefore the two Ruthvens plotted to get him into their hands early in the day; and, when he arrived late, with a considerable train, they endeavoured to send these gentlemen after the king, by averring that he had ridden homewards.  The dead Ruthvens with their house were forfeited.