re and her
untidy dress. She was so glad to see me and hoped I'd got another book
to print. Humph! She told me she didn't see Gladys very often nowadays;
had a flat of her own in Fulham. My brother had crooked his finger, and
away she ran. Miss Flagg told me all about it, how Gladys had taken to
paint--on her face I mean--and gone to the devil generally. I'll say
this for Miss Flagg, she never used anything to add to her beauty, much
as she needed it. We were going on very nicely when I happened to
mention I was married, and all the light went out of Miss Flagg's face.
She was finished with me. You see, even when they're after votes,
they're just the same. I left her and took Rosa to the Zoo in the
afternoon. I enjoyed that, and so did she.

"After about three months of this sort of thing, I began to hanker for
the sea again. You may wonder at that, but it's a fact. It grows on men,
me for one. I felt lost without the beat of the engine, you know. So I
applied for several jobs, and finally the builders of the ship I'm on
now, the _Raritan_, wanted a chief to take her out to New York. I got
the job and we went to Sunderland to join her. Since then I've been
crossing and recrossing the Western Ocean. And speaking in a general
way, that's all there is to it."

Mr. Carville, pinching his shaven chin with a thumb and fore-finger,
looked down meditatively at his boots. In some subtle way his manner
belied his words. I felt a lively conviction that there was in a
particular way something more to it. It seemed quite incredible that he
had no more to tell us of his brother.

"Surely," I said, "you have heard of your brother since?"

He gave me a quick look.

"That's right," he said. "I have. I was going to tell you about it. I
saw him, fifteen days ago, in the North Sea."

"Great Scott, did you really?" exclaimed Mac, and he picked up the copy
of _The Morning_. "Look here!"

Mr. Carville took the paper and read the news without exhibiting any
emotion. I saw his eyelid flicker as he glanced down the special article
by "Vol-Plane." Lord Cholme's concern for the Empire seemed to leave
him cold.

"Humph!" he remarked and handed the paper to Mac, remaining lost in
thought for a moment.

"Ah!" he said at length. "That certainly accounts for him. But it
doesn't say anything about the three green lights."

"What green lights?" I asked, little thinking that I should see these
same lights myself in the near future.

"I'll t