Reading Jail that day was a mustering of the clans. All the isolation men from the various prisons, Wakefield, Knutsford, and Wandsworth, including many who had been to Frongoch, were gathered together at Reading. It was meant as an elect company; but it was not at all as elect as the selectors imagined. We ourselves entertained no delusions on that head. One of the most distinguished of our company had been wildly hailed on his arrival months before at Wandsworth, as the man who “’ad been a-hinciting of ’em”; and apparently the net had been thrown to sweep into Reading all those who “’ad been a-hinciting of ’em”; but the net had had a singularly faulty mesh. Even the original net that had swept through the country during the month of May, carefully though it had been wrought, and thoroughly though it had been cast, had had a mesh none too perfect. There were but twenty-eight [105]of us gathered together that day; and we had, as it were, a double crown pressed on our heads; but we made haste to disown the title to wear it.

Yet we were glad to meet. National work necessarily intersects at many points, and so most of us who foregathered that day for our months of association had met before in differing combinations, and at different times, in differing groups of work that were but part of the one great work. Yet we............