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 in London, where a membership in the Savile Club added to his enjoyment.  Here he met several interesting men, among them Edmund William Gosse and Sidney Colvin, both writers and literary critics, with whom he became very intimate.