A quarter-past ten, half-past. A constant stream of telegraph boys poured in through the prison gates.

‘Yamley’s factory hands just voted you can guess how,’ ran a despairing message, and the others were all of the same tenor. Nemesis was going the way of Reading.

‘Have you any band instruments of an easy nature to play?’ demanded the Chief Organiser of the Prison Governor; ‘drums, cymbals, those sort of things?’

‘The warders have a private band of their own,’ said the Governor, ‘but of course I couldn’t allow the men themselves—’

‘Lend us the instruments,’ said the Chief Organiser.

One of the earnest helpful friends was a skilled performer on the cornet, the Cabinet Ministers were able to clash cymbals more or less in tune, and the Chief Organiser had some knowledge of the drum.

‘What tune would you prefer?’ he asked Platterbaff.

‘The popular song of the moment,’ replied the Agitator after a moment’s reflection.

It was a tune they had all heard hundreds of times, so there was no difficulty in turning out a passable imitation of it. To the improvised strains of ‘I didn’t want to do it’ the prisoner strode forth to freedom. The words of the song had reference, it was understood, to the incarcerating Government and not to the destroyer of the Albert Hall.

The seat was lost, after all, by a narrow majority. The local Trade Unionists took offence at the fact of Cabinet Ministers having personally acted as strike-breakers, and even the release of Platterbaff failed to pacify them.

The seat was lost, but Ministers had scored a moral victory. They had shown that they knew when and how to yield.