.

A LETTER FROM SHEILA.
The light of the cell was dim, but Dyck managed to read the letter without great difficulty, for the writing was almost as precise as print.

The sight of it caught his heart like a warm hand and pressed it.
This was the substance of the letter: MY DEAR FRIEND: I have wanted to visit you in prison, but my mother has forbidden it, and so, even if I could be let to enter, I must not disobey her.
I have not read the papers giving an account of your trial.

I only know you are charged with killing a bad man, notorious in Dublin life, and that many think he got his just deserts in being killed.
I saw Christopher Dogan only a week ago, before we came to Dublin.
His eyes, as he talked of you, shone like the secret hill-fires where the peasants make illegal drink.
"Look you," he said to me, "I care not what a jury decides.

I know my man; and I also know that if the fellow Boyne died by his hand, it was in fair fight.