Tim's "particular adventure" was of another kind. It was a self-repeater--of some violence, moreover, when the smallness of the hero is considered. Whether in after-life he become an astronomer-poet or a "silver-and-mechanical engineer"--both dreams of his--he will ever be sharp upon rescuing something. A lost star or a burning mine will be his objective, but with the essential condition that it be--unattainable. Achievement would mean lost interest. For Tim's desire was, is, and ever will be insatiable. Profoundest mystery, insoluble difficulty, and endless searching were what his soul demanded of life. For him all ponds were bottomless, all gipsies older than the moon. He felt the universe within him, and was born to seek its inexplicable "explanation"--outside. The realisation of such passion, however, is not necessarily confined to writers of epics and lyrics. Tim was a man of action before he was a poet. "Forever questing" was his unacknowledged motto. Besides asking questions about stars and other inaccessible incidents of his Cosmos, he liked to "go busting about," as he called it--again with one essential condition that the thing should never come to an end by merely happening. Its mystery must remain its beauty. "I want to save something from an awful, horrible death," he announced one evening, looking up from _Half-hours with English Battles_ for a sign of beauty in distress. "Not so easy," his uncle warned him, equally weary of another overrated book--his own. "But I feel like it," he replied. "Come on." Uncle Felix still held back. "That you feel like it doesn't prove that there's anything that _wants_ rescuing," he objected. The boy stared at him with patient tolerance and surprise. "I promised," he said simply. It was the other's turn to stare. "And when, pray?" They had been alone for the last half hour. It seemed strange. "Oh--just now," replied the boy carelessly. "A few minutes ago--about." "Indeed!" It seemed stranger still. No one had come in. Yet Tim never prevaricated. "Yes," he said, "I gave my wordy honour." It was so gravely spoken that, while pledges involving life and death were obviously not new to him, this one was of exceptional kind. "Who, then, did you promise--whom, I mean?" the man demanded, fixing him with his stern blue eyes. And the answer came out pat: "Myself!" "Aha!" said the other, with a sigh and a raising of the eyebrows, by way of apology. "That settles it--" "Of course." "Because what you think and say, you must also act," the man continued. "If you promise yourself a thing, and then don't do it, you've simply told a lie." And he drew another sigh. He scented action coming.