r comforts to make his prolonged stay in the
infirmary less wearisome and a warm friendship sprang up between them.

As Henley grew stronger they planned to work together and write plays.
Stevenson had done nothing of the kind since he was nineteen. Now they
chose to use the same plot that he had experimented with at that time.
It was the story of the notorious Deacon Brodie of Edinburgh, which both
considered contained good material for a play.

"A great man in his day was the Deacon; well seen in good society,
crafty with his hands as a cabinet-maker, and one who could sing a song
with taste. Many a citizen was proud to welcome the Deacon to supper,
and dismiss him with regret ... who would have been vastly disconcerted
had he known how soon, and in what guise his visitor returned. Many
stories are told of this redoubtable Edinburgh burgher.... A friend of
Brodie's ... told him of a projected visit to the country, and
afterwards detained by some affairs, put it off and stayed the night in
town. The good man had lain some time awake; it was far on in the small
hours by the Tron bell; when suddenly there came a crack, a jar, a faint
light. Softly he clambered out of bed and up to a false window which
looked upon another room, and there, by the glimmer of a thieves'
lantern, was his good friend the Deacon in a mask."

At length after a certain robbery in one of the government offices the
Deacon was suspected. He escaped to Holland, but was arrested in
Amsterdam as he was about to start for America. He was brought back to
Edinburgh, was tried and convicted and hanged on the second of October,
1788, at the west end of the Tolbooth, which was the famous old
Edinburgh prison known as the Heart of Midlothian.

[Illustration: Edinburgh Castle]

This story of Brodie had always interested Stevenson since he had heard
it as a child, and a cabinet made by the clever Deacon himself formed
part of the furniture of his nursery.

"Deacon Brodie" and other plays were finished and produced, but never
proved successful. Indeed, the money came in but slowly from any of his
writings and, aside from the critics, it was many a long day before he
was appreciated by the people of his own city and country. They refused
to believe that "that daft laddie Stevenson," who had so often shocked
them by his eccentric ways and scorn of conventions, could do anything
worth while. So by far his happiest times were spent out of Scotland,
principally