now despatched to Gowrie, bidding him prepare dinner for the King._
This is not part of James's direct evidence. He was _unknowing and
unsuspecting that any man living had come_ with Ruthven.

Throughout the chase Ruthven was ever near the King, always urging him
'to hasten the end of the hunting.' The buck was slain close to the
stables, and Ruthven would not allow James to wait for a second horse:
that was sent after him. So the King did not even tarry to 'brittle'
the buck, and merely told the Duke of Lennox, Mar, and others that he
was riding to Perth to speak with Gowrie, and would return before
evening. Some of the Court went to Falkland for fresh horses, other
followed slowly with weary steeds. They followed 'undesired by him,'
because a report rose that the King had some purpose to apprehend the
oppressive Master of Oliphant. Ruthven implored James not to bring
Lennox and Mar, but only three or four servants, to which the King
answered 'half angrily.'

This odd conduct roused suspicion in James. He had been well
acquainted with Ruthven, who was suing for the place of a Gentleman of
the Bedchamber, or Cubicular. 'The farthest that the King's suspicion
could reach to was, that it might be that the Earl, his brother, had
handled him so hardly, that the young gentleman, being of a high
spirit, had taken such displeasure as he was beside himself;' hence
his curious, agitated, and moody behaviour. James, as they rode,
consulted Lennox, whose first wife had been a sister of Gowrie. Lennox
had never seen anything of mental unsettlement in young Ruthven, but
James bade the Duke 'accompany him into that house' (room), where the
gold and the bearer of it lay. Lennox thought the story of the gold
'unlikely.' Ruthven seeing them in talk, urged that James should be
secret, and bring nobody with him to the first inspection of the