There were several outsiders in the club on this particular night. Not outsiders in the strictest sense of the term; merely members who did not belong to the little coterie of old-timers who went there night after night and assumed, by virtue of regular and faithful attendance, the right to occupy the most prominent and at the same time the most comfortable couches and chairs in the lounge-that is to say, the cushioned hollow-square fronting the massive fireplace, and on this particular night, it may be added, a seat close to the roaring fire was more to be coveted than usual, for it was not only bitterly cold outside but inside as well. Indeed there was something distinctly and unpleasantly suggestive of an icehouse about the interior of the club-except, of course, in and about that hallowed region afore-designated as a hollow square.