er. "Most just."

The one called Sir John bowed himself away, leaving the other still
standing at the steps of the lounge. With his hands behind his back, his
chin sunk on his chest, he remained, gazing at nothing, his thoughts far
away.

Philip found them thoughts of curious interest. They were concerned with
three flags. Now, the gentleman considered them separately; and Philip
saw the emblems painted clearly in colors, fluttering and flattened
by the breeze. Again, the gentleman considered them in various
combinations; but always, in whatever order his mind arranged them, of
the three his heart spoke always to the same flag, as the heart of a
mother reaches toward her firstborn.

Then the thoughts were diverted; and in his mind's eye the old gentleman
was watching the launching of a little schooner from a shipyard on the
Clyde. At her main flew one of the three flags--a flag with a red cross
on a white ground. With thoughts tender and grateful, he followed her
to strange, hot ports, through hurricanes and tidal waves; he saw her
return again and again to the London docks, laden with odorous coffee,
mahogany, red rubber, and raw bullion. He saw sister ships follow in her
wake to every port in the South Sea; saw steam packets take the place
of the ships with sails; saw the steam packets give way to great
ocean liners, each a floating village, each equipped, as no village is
equipped, with a giant power house, thousands of electric lamps, suite
after suite of silk-lined boudoirs, with the floating harps that vibrate
to a love message three hundred miles away, to the fierce call for help
from a sinking ship. But at the main of each great vessel there still
flew the same house-flag--the red cross on the field of white--only now
in the arms of the cross there nestled proudly a royal crown.

Philip cast a scared glance at the old gentleman, and raced down the
corridor to the telephone.

Of all the young Englishmen he knew, Maddox was his best friend and a
stock-broker. In that latter capacity Philip had never before addressed
him. Now he demanded his instant presence at the telephone.

Maddox greeted him genially, but Philip cut him short.

"I want you to act for me," he whispered, "and act quick! I want you
to buy for me one thousand shares of the Royal Mail Line, of the
Elder-Dempster, and of the Union Castle."

He heard Maddox laugh indulgently.

"There's nothing in that yarn of a combine," he called. "It has f