Even the onslaught upon the Excise Office, which cost his life, was contrived with appalling clumsiness.  The Deacon of the Wrights’ Guild, who could slash wood at his will, who knew the artifice of every lock in the city, let his men go to work with no better implements than the stolen coulter of a plough and a pair of spurs.  And when they tackled the ill omened job, Brodie was of those who brought failure upon it.  Long had they watched the door of the Excise; long had they studied the habits of its clerks; so that they went to work in no vain spirit of experiment.  Nor on the fatal night did they force an entrance until they had dogged the porter to his home.  Smith and Brown ransacked the place for money, while Brodie and Andrew Ainslie remained without to give a necessary warning.  Whereupon Ainslie was seized with fright, and Brodie, losing his head, called off the others, so that six hundred pounds were left, that might have been an easy prey.  Smith, indignant at the collapse of the long-pondered design, laid the blame upon his master, and they swung, as Brodie’s grim spirit of farce suggested, for four pounds apiece.

The humours of the situation were all the Deacon’s own.  He dressed the part in black; his respectability grinned behind a vizard; and all the while he trifled nonchalantly with a pistol.  Breaking the silence with snatches from The Beggar’s Opera, he promised that all their lead should turn to gold, christened the coulter and the crow the Great and Little Samuel, and then went off to drink and dice at the Vintner’s.  How could anger prevail against this undying gaiety?  And if Smith were peevish at failure, he was presently reconciled, and prepared once more to die for his Deacon.

Even after escape, the amateur is still apparent.  True, he managed the trip to Flushing with his ancient extravagance; true, he employed all the juggleries of the law to prevent his surrender at Amsterdam.  But he knew not the caution of the born criminal, and he was run to earth, because he would still write to his friends like a gentleman.  His letters, during this nightmare of disaster, are perfect in their carelessness and good-fellowship.  In this he demands news of his children, as becomes a father and a citizen, and furnishes a schedule of their education; in that he is curious concerning the issue of a main, and would know whether his black cock came off triumphant.  Nor, even in flight, did he forget his proper craft, but would have his tools sent to Charleston, that in America he might resume the trade that had made him Deacon.

But his was the art of conduct, not of guile, and he deserved capture for his rare indifference.  Why, then, with no natural impulsion, did he risk the gallows?  Why, being no born thief, and innocent of the thief’s cunning, did he associate with so clever a scoundrel as George Smith, with cowards craven as Brown and Ainslie?  The greed of gold, doubtless, half persuaded him, but gold was otherwise