Had it not been for the Deacon’s unhappy propensity for gambling and dissipation, his circumstances at this time should have been highly satisfactory. During his term of office he was regularly employed by his fellow-Councillors to execute wrightwork in connection with the town--his accounts for the year 1782-3, for instance, amounting to upwards of £600. In addition to the city work, his social and official position had secured for him the best cabinetmaking business in Edinburgh; but, notwithstanding these advantages, he was frequently at a loss for money. Deacon Brodie was already, in Stevenson’s striking phrase, “a man harassed below a mountain of duplicity,” and to one so circumstanced it is not surprising that the idea occurred of putting his professional opportunities to an unlawful use. He knew the locks and bolts of all the houses of his customers; was familiar with their internal arrangements and the habits of the owners; and could, without incurring remark, exhibit in such matters a professional interest in the houses of his friends and acquaintances. No doubt he was sometimes consulted, at a later stage, as to the best means of defence against his own infraction. He was shortly, as we shall see, to become the leader of a gang of robbers, whose mysterious depredations, under his skilful conduct, were, during eighteen months, to baffle the authorities and strike terror to the hearts of wealthy burgesses; but at the outset of his career of crime the Deacon worked alone. “Many a citizen,” says Stevenson, “was proud to welcome the Deacon to supper, and dismissed him with regret at a timeous hour, 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 burglar, but the one I have in my mind most vividly gives the key of all the rest. A friend of Brodie’s, nesting some way towards heaven in one of these great ‘lands,’ had 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 creak, 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.”