A more picturesque, if less probable version of the same story is given by the author of “Reminiscences of Glasgow,” on the authority of Æneas Morrison. It is there stated that any attempt to effect the Deacon’s rescue by overpowering the City Guard or breaking into the Tolbooth having, after due consideration, been abandoned by his friends as hopeless, the following elaborate scheme was to be attempted to save his life. Shortly before the hour of his execution, the Deacon was to beg that he might speak to certain of his friends alone for a few moments upon his private affairs. This request being complied with, the opportunity should be seized for introducing into his throat and mouth a small silver tube made for the purpose, with the view of preventing suffocation, and wires were to be carried down his sides from head to foot to save the jerk from the scaffold. The executioner was to be induced to give him a short drop, and other liberties were to be taken with the fatal rope. A surgeon--doubtless the philanthropic Degravers--was to be in attendance to bleed him as soon as the body was cut down; and, if this succeeded, the Deacon was to lie quiet in his coffin, exhibiting no symptom of life, till such time as it could be safely removed to his own house for presumed interment by his relatives. Whether or not this remarkable programme was ever carried out is not recorded. It would appear from these reports that an attempt of some kind was made with a view to resuscitate the Deacon; and there is no doubt that many people believed at the time that he had “cheated the wuddy” after all. It was said that he had actually revived and made good his escape from Scotland; that he was afterwards seen and conversed with in Paris. His coffin was certainly interred in the north-east corner of the burying-ground of St. Cuthbert’s Chapel of Ease--now Buccleuch Parish Church; but there is a tradition that, on a subsequent occasion, the grave was opened, when no trace of his body could be found. These stories are probably apocryphal; but they are curious as showing the exceptional interest which the Deacon’s strange career aroused in the minds of his fellow-townsmen. And although his mortal remains, wheresoever situated, must long since have crumbled into dust, the name and doings of Deacon Brodie are indissolubly associated with the annals of that ancient city in which, to a conclusion so disastrous, he played his double part. THE TRIAL WEDNESDAY, 27TH AUGUST, 1788. The Court met at Nine o’clock. _Judges Present_-- THE LORD JUSTICE-CLERK (_Lord Braxfield_). LORD HAILES. LORD ESKGROVE. LORD STONEFIELD. LORD SWINTON. _Counsel for the Crown_--