how to import and combine multiple.mat files into one big matrix??

i would like to import and combine the contents of 20 .mat files (4 columns per file, all cells are ints) from the same folder into one long data array so that i can analyze each of the four columns by row (line by line). the wiki examples show how to import multiple jpeg and text files, and the video on here, 'how to import files programmatically', uses excel files as an example, but nothing about combining and importing multiple .mat files. this should be simple, but im a novice and im learning on my own. can someone point me in the right direction or show me how i would do this with a for loop?

so far i have

data = dir('../.mat');
numfiles = length(data);
mydata = cell(1, numfiles);
for k = 1:numfiles 
  mydata{k} = matfile(data(k).name); 
end

which gives me the files in the folder but not their contents.

Answer 1

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

EDIT

for k = 1:numfiles 
 mydata{k} = data(k).name; 
 data{k}=load(mydata{k})
end

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

for k = 1:numfiles 
   mydata{k} = data(k).name; 
   data{k}=load(mydata{k})
end

[chad]

thanks for the reply! although this code gives the error message: argument must contain string for the line: data{k}=load(mydata{k}) does it matter that all the data in my data sets are ints?