Ewan said he thought the same, for years it was likely the workers’ movements would be driven underground, they’d to take advantage of legality as long as they could and then prepare for underground work—perhaps a generation of secret agitation and occasional terrorism. And Trease nodded, and they left all that to heed to itself and Trease sat twinkling, his collar off, and told Ewan of his life as a propagandist far and wide over Scotland and England, agitprop in Glasgow, Lanark, Dundee, the funny occurrences that now seemed funny, they’d seemed dead serious when he was young. He’d tramped to lone villages and stood to speak and been chased from such places by gangs of ploughmen—once taken and stripped and half-drowned in a trough; he’d been jailed again and again for this and that petty crime he’d never committed, and in time took the lot as just the day’s work; he’d been out with Connolly at Easter in Dublin, an awfully mismanaged Rising that. But the things he minded best were the silly, small things—nights in mining touns when he’d finished an address to a local branch and the branch secretary would hie him away home to his house: and Trease find the house a single room, with a canty dame, the miner’s wife, cooking them a supper and bidding them welcome: and they’d sit and eat and Trease all the time have a bit of a worry on his mind—where the hell was he going to sleep?: and the miner would say Well, look this way, comrade, and Trease would hear a bit creak at the back of the room—the miner’s wife getting into bed: and he and the miner would sit and claik the moon into morning and both give a yawn and the miner would say Time for the bed. I’ll lie in the middle and you in the front: and in they’d get and soon be asleep, nothing queer and antrin in it at all, not even when the miner got up and out at the chap of six and left you lying there with his mate, you’d as soon have thought of touching your sister.

And Ewan laughed and then grew serious and spoke of his work in the Stoddart yard, he was raising up something of a cell in the yard, could Jim dig out a bundle of pamphlets for him? They’d all been Labour when he went to Stoddart’s, but already he’d another four in the cell. Trease said he’d give him pamphlets enough, Stoddart’s was a place worth bothering about, how long did Ewan think he would last before he was fired by the management? Ewan said he thought a couple of months, you never could tell, damned nuisance, he was getting interested in granite. And that led him on to metallurgy, on and on, and Trease sat and listened and poured himself a fresh cup of tea now and then … till Ewan pulled himself up with a laugh: Must clear out now. I’ve been blithering for hours.