Their hours of leisure furnish a yet more striking contrast.  Simms was a polished dandy delighting in his clothes, unhappy if he were deprived of his bottle and his game.  Haggart, on the other hand, was before all things sealed to his profession.  He would have deserted the gayest masquerade, had he ever strayed into so light a frivolity, for the chance of lightening a pocket.  He tasted but few amusements without the limits of his craft, and he preserved unto the end a touch of that dour character which is the heritage of his race.  But, withal, he was an amiable decent body, who would have recoiled in horror from the drunken brutality of Gentleman Harry.  Though he bragged to George Combe of his pitiless undoing of wenches, he never thrust a crab-stick into a woman’s eye, and he was incapable of rewarding a kindness by robbery and neglect.  Once—­at Newcastle—­he arrayed himself in a smart white coat and tops, but the splendour ill became his red-headed awkwardness, and he would have stood aghast at the satin frocks and velvet waistcoats of him who broke the hearts of Drury Lane.  But if he were gentler in his life, Haggart was prepared to fight with a more reckless courage when his trade demanded it.  It was the Gentleman’s boast that he never shed the blood of man.  When David found a turnkey between himself and freedom, he did not hesitate to kill, though his remorse was bitter enough when he neared the gallows.  In brief, Haggart was not only the better craftsman, but the honester fellow, and though his hands were red with blood, he deserved his death far less than did the more truculent, less valiant Simms.  Each had in his brain the stuff whereof men of letters are made:  this is their parallel.  And, by way of contrast, while the Switcher was an accomplished artist, Gentleman Harry was a roystering braggart.

DEACON BRODIE AND CHARLES PEACE

I—­DEACON BRODIE

As William Brodie stood at the bar, on trial for a his life, he seemed the gallantest gentleman in court.  Thither he had been carried in a chair, and, still conscious of the honour paid him, he flashed a condescending smile upon his judges.  His step was jaunty as ever; his superb attire well became the Deacon of a Guild.  His coat was blue, his vest a very garden of flowers; while his satin breeches and his stockings of white silk were splendid in their simplicity.  Beneath a cocked hat his hair was fully dressed and powdered, and even the prosecuting counsel assailed him with the respect due to a man of fashion.  The fellow’s magnificence was thrown into relief by the squalor of his accomplice.  For George Smith had neither the money nor the taste to disguise himself as a polished rogue, and he huddled as far from his master as he could in the rags of his mean estate.  Nor from this moment did Brodie ever abate one jot of his dignity.  He faced his accusers with a clear eye and a frigid amiability; he listened to his sentence with a calm contempt; he laughed complacently at the sorry interludes of judicial wit; and he faced the last music with a bravery and a cynicism which bore the stamp of true greatness.