Page 250

 APPENDIX C 250 
THE ' PEN' LETTER 
The following is the full text of Davitt's ' Pen' Letter: 
' Dear Friend,—I have just returned from Dundee, which place I have
left all right. Your letter of Monday I have just read. I have no doubt but
what the account is correct. In reference to the other affair, I hope you
won't take any part in it whatever— I mean in the carrying of it out.
If it is decided upon, and you receive Jem's and, through him, Fitz's consent,
let it be done by all means; but one thing you must remember, and that is
that you are of too much importance to our family to be spared, even at the
risk of allowing a rotten sheep to exist among the flock. You must know that
if anything happened to you the toil and trouble of the last six months will
have been almost in vain. Whoever is employed, don't let him use the pen
we are and have been selling; get another for the purpose, a common one.
I hope and trust when I return to Man I may not hear that every man, woman,
and child know all about it crc it occurred'. 
 (F. Sheehy-Skeffington, Michael Davitt, London, 1908, pp. 25—6.)