WITNESS--I am acquainted intimately with both the pannels, and have been frequently in company with them, and with Andrew Ainslie, then a shoemaker in Edinburgh. I have met Brodie often at Smith’s house and other places. I know that the General Excise Office in Chessels’s Buildings was broken into upon Wednesday, the 5th of March last; I was myself one of them that broke into it, and Andrew Ainslie and the two prisoners were along with me. George Smith and I were within the office, Brodie was at the door, and Andrew Ainslie was without, keeping watch. We had resolved three months before to break into it; and on the 30th of November last, the night on which the Free Masons made a public procession last winter, Smith, Ainslie, and I went to the Excise Office and unlocked the outer door with a false key. We went in together, and opened the inner door to the hall with a pair of toupee irons, but none of the keys we had would open the cashier’s door. Smith said a coulter would be a good thing to open it with. Thinking it too late to remain longer, we came out again; but we could not lock the outer door with the key, and therefore left it unlocked. Last spring Ainslie and I went to Duddingston, and drank a bottle of porter in a house there; afterwards we went into a field in the neighbourhood, in which there were two ploughs, and carried off the coulter of one of them, which we hid in Salisbury Crags. On the evening of the 5th of March last, which was two or three days afterwards, when it was about dusk, Ainslie and I went out to Salisbury Crags for the coulter, and brought it in with us to Smith’s house. Smith was at home, but Brodie was not yet come, although we expected him. The hour at which we had agreed to meet was seven, but Mr. Brodie did not come until near eight. The purpose of our meeting was to go and rob the Excise Office that night. We were in Smith’s room above-stairs when Brodie joined us, and we there drank some gin and “black cork,” and ate some herrings and chicken. By “black cork” I mean Bell’s beer. Mr. Brodie was then dressed in black; in the preceding part of the day I saw him in white or light-coloured clothes. I do not remember that he had a great-coat on when he came to us at Smith’s in the evening. When he entered the room he took a pistol from his pocket, and repeated the verse of a song of Macheath’s from a play, words like--“We’ll turn our lead into gold,” or such like.[12] After we were all met together, it was agreed upon that Ainslie should remain on the outside of the Excise Office, within the rails, with a whistle, to give the alarm in case of danger; that Brodie was to be stationed within the outer door for the same purpose; and that Smith and I should go into the cashier’s room. Accordingly, Ainslie left Smith’s first, and in some time after I followed. Brodie was not disguised, but Smith and I had crapes in our pocket, and Smith had likewise a wig, which, I believe, had once belonged to Brodie’s father.