The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls

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see a poor fellow, a poet who writes for him, and who has been eighteen
months in our Infirmary, and may be for all I know eighteen months more.
Stephen and I sat on a couple of chairs, and the poor fellow sat up in
his bed with his hair and beard all tangled, and talked as cheerfully as
if he had been in a king's palace of blue air."

This was William Ernest Henley, and his brave determination to live and
work, though he knew he must ever remain in a maimed condition, roused
Stevenson's sincere admiration. With his usual impetuous generosity, he
brought him books and other comforts to make his prolonged stay in the
infirmary less wearisome and a warm friendship sprang up between them.

As Henley grew stronger they planned to work together and write plays.
Stevenson had done nothing of the kind since he was nineteen. Now they
chose to use the same plot that he had experimented with at that time.
It was the story of the notorious Deacon Brodie of Edinburgh, which both
considered contained good material for a play.