Only one word of petulance escaped his lips: when the
halters were found too short, his contempt for slovenly workmanship
urged him to protest, and to demand a punishment for the executioner.
Again ascending the table, he assured himself against further mishap
by arranging the rope with his own hands. Thus he was turned off in
a brilliant assembly. The Provost and Magistrates, in respect for his
dandyism, were resplendent in their robes of office, and though the
crowd of spectators rivalled that which paid a tardy honour to Jonathan
Wild, no one was hurt save the customary policeman. Such was the
dignified end of a 'double life.' And the duplicity is the stranger,
because the real Deacon was not Brodie the Cracksman, but Brodie the
Gentleman. So lightly did he esteem life that he tossed it from him in
a careless impulse. So little did he fear death that, 'What is hanging?'
he asked. 'A leap in the dark.'
II--CHARLES PEACE
CHARLES PEACE, after the habit of his kind, was born of scrupulously
honest parents. The son of a religious file-maker, he owed to his father
not only his singular piety but his love of edged tools. As he never
encountered an iron bar whose scission baffled him, so there never was
a fire-eating Methodist to whose ministrations he would not turn a
repentant ear. After a handy portico and a rich booty he loved nothing
so well as a soul-stirring discourse. Not even his precious fiddle
occupied a larger space in his heart than that devotion which the
ignorant have termed hypocrisy.
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