moment proved barren of this possibility, he wearied of it and sought another.  And the search seemed prolonged and hopeless, for the adventure he sought was not a common kind, but something that should provide him with a means of escape from a vulgar and noisy world that bored him very much indeed.  He sought an adventure that should announce to him a new heaven and a new earth; something that should confirm, if not actually replace, that inner region of wonder and delight he reveled in as a boy, but which education and conflict with a prosaic age had swept away from his nearer consciousness.  He sought, that is, an authoritative adventure of the soul.

To look at, one could have believed that until the age of twenty-five he had been nameless, and that a committee had then sat upon the subject and selected the sound best suited to describe him:  Spinrobin—­Robert.  For, had he never seen himself, but run into that inner prairie of his and called aloud “Robert Spinrobin,” an individual exactly resembling him would surely have pattered up to claim the name.

He was slight, graceful, quick on his feet and generally alert; took little steps that were almost hopping, and when he was in a hurry gave him the appearance of “spinning” down the pavement or up the stairs; always wore clothes of some fluffy material, with a low collar and bright red tie; had soft pink cheeks, dancing grey eyes and loosely scattered hair, prematurely thin and unquestionably like feathers.  His hands and feet were small and nimble.  When he stood in his favorite attitude with hands plunged deep in his pockets, coat-tails slightly spread and flapping, head on one side and hair disordered, talking in that high, twittering, yet very agreeable voice of his, it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that here was—­well—­Spinrobin, Bobby Spinrobin, “on the job.”

For he took on any “job” that promised adventure of the kind he sought, and the queerer the better.  As soon as he found that his present occupation led to nothing, he looked about for something new—­chiefly in the newspaper advertisements.  Numbers of strange people advertised in the newspapers, he knew, just as numbers of strange people wrote letters to them; and Spinny—­so he was called by those who loved him—­was a diligent student of the columns known as “Agony” and “Help wanted.”  Whereupon it came about that he was aged twenty-eight, and out of a job, when the threads of the following occurrence wove into the pattern of his life, and “led to something” of a kind that may well be cause for question and amazement.

The advertisement that formed the bait read as follows:—­

“Wanted, by Retired Clergyman, Secretarial Assistant with courage and imagination.  Tenor voice and some knowledge of Hebrew essential; single; unworldly.  Apply Philip Skale,”—­and the address.