n his heart,
General O'Reilly flipped the Golden Judge high in the air.

Eire won. The Six Counties were no longer lost, and there was little
enough work done in Ireland for a fortnight. Eire instantly and
magnanimously granted to her new north all the points that had been
fought over so bitterly for so many years. For the northerners, to their
surprise, life went on exactly as before, except for different postage
stamps, and a changed heading on their income-tax returns, which were
considerably lower. For the first time in many years, there were no
brickbats thrown if a man felt the need, on a summer night, to sing
"God Save the Queen."

General O'Reilly flew away from Ireland with a mist in his eyes and a
great glow in his heart. In a shaven second, he had achieved the thing
for which long and gallant generations of earlier O'Reillys had fought
bloodily and in vain. For a fleeting moment, he wondered if his nervous
right hand that day had shown any subconscious partisanship, but
rejected the thing as impossible. If the toss for the Six Counties was,
in a way, the crowning peak of General O'Reilly's career, it was by no
means the end of it. Both he and his coin were fast becoming settled
tradition. He continued his normal military career, but with the tacit
understanding he would have a few days' leave of absence whenever the
Golden Judge was needed.

He took it to Stockholm for the toss that settled the old and bitter
fishing controversy between Britain and Iceland. Britain won.

He took it to Cairo, where Britain and Greece tossed for Cyprus. Greece
won, and at once offered Britain all the bases she wanted there, and
granted special extraterritorial status to all British colonels,
knights' widows and former governors of the Punjab living in retirement
on the island.

He got his third star just before he flew down to Rio de Janiero for the
toss that finally settled the nagging quarrel between Britain and
Argentina as to who owned the Falkland Islands. Britain won.

He took it to The Hague in Holland for the toss about the Saar. The Saar
had remained a European sore point despite a series of Franco-German
"settlements" which never seemed to settle anything. Germany won the
toss, and immediately, of her own free will, granted the French equal
commercial rights.

The Saar toss had two odd results. The first was purely personal for
General O'Reilly, but he never forgot it. One day, driving through The
Hague, his