round, while Hebraic-looking
gentlemen, wearing tartan waistcoats of the clans of their adoption,
flitted restlessly between the tape machines and telephone boxes. The
army of occupation had obviously established a firm footing in the
hospitable premises; a kaleidoscopic pattern of uniforms, sky-blue,
indigo, and bottle-green, relieved the civilian attire of the groups that
clustered in lounge and card rooms and corridors. Yeovil rapidly came to
the conclusion that the joys of membership were not for him. He had
turned to go, after a very cursory inspection of the premises and their
human occupants, when he was hailed by a young man, dressed with
strenuous neatness, whom he remembered having met in past days at the
houses of one or two common friends.

Hubert Herlton's parents had brought him into the world, and some twenty-
one years later had put him into a motor business. Having taken these
pardonable liberties they had completely exhausted their ideas of what to
do with him, and Hubert seemed unlikely to develop any ideas of his own
on the subject. The motor business elected to conduct itself without his
connivance; journalism, the stage, tomato culture (without capital), and
other professions that could be entered on at short notice were submitted
to his consideration by nimble-minded relations and friends. He listened
to their suggestions with polite indifference, being rude only to a
cousin who demonstrated how he might achieve a settled income of from two
hundred to a thousand pounds a year by the propagation of mushrooms in a
London basement. While his walk in life was still an undetermined
promenade his parents died, leaving him with a carefully-invested income
of thirty-seven pounds a year. At that point of his career Yeovil's
knowledge of him stopped short; the journey to Siberia had taken him
beyond the range of Herlton's domestic vicissitudes.

The young man greeted him in a decidedly friendly manner.

"I didn't know you were a member here," he exclaimed.

"It's the first time I've ever been in the club," said Yeovil, "and I
fancy it will be the last. There is rather too much of the fighting
machine in evidence here. One doesn't want a perpetual reminder of what
has happened staring one in the face."

"We tried at first to keep the alien element out," said Herlton
apologetically, "but we couldn't have carried on the club if we'd stuck
to that line. You see we'd lost more than two-thirds of o