So they reached London, and quartered themselves in simple lodgings in Soho. Dyck walked the streets, and now and then he paid a visit to the barracks where soldiers were, to satisfy the thought that perhaps in the life of the common soldier he might, after all, find his future. It was, however, borne in upon him by a chance remark of Michael one day--"I'm not young enough to be a recruit, and you wouldn't go alone without me, would you?"--that this way to a livelihood was not open to him. His faithful companion's remark had fixed Dyck's mind against entering the army, and then, towards the end of the winter, a fateful thing happened. His purse containing what was left of the ninety pounds--two- fifths of it--disappeared. It had been stolen, and in all the bitter days to come, when poverty and misery ground them down, no hint of the thief, no sign of the robber, was ever revealed. Then, at last, a day when a letter came from Ireland. It was from the firm in which Bryan Llyn of Virginia had been interested, for the letter had been sent to their care, and Dyck had given them his address in London on this very chance. It reached Dyck's hands on the day after the last penny had been paid out for their lodgings, and they faced the streets, penniless, foodless--one was going to say friendless. The handwriting was that of Sheila Llyn. At a street corner, by a chemist's shop where a red light burned, Dyck opened and read the letter. This is what Sheila had written to him. MY DEAR FRIEND: The time is near (I understand by a late letter to my mother from an official) when you will be freed from prison and will face the world again. I have not written you since your trial, but I have never forgotten and never shall. I have been forbidden to write to you or think of you, but I will take my own way about you. I have known all that has happened since we left Ireland, through the letters my mother has received. I know that Playmore has been sold, and I am sorry. Now that your day of release is near, and you are to be again a free man, have you decided about your future? Is it to be in Ireland? No, I think not. Ireland is no place for a sane and level man to fight for honour, fame, and name. I hear that things are worse there in every way than they have been in our lifetime.