It fell out on this wise. In the hope of lightening the weight of depression under which I laboured, I took to riding again so many afternoons a week—an indulgence which I could now afford. True, a hack from a livery stable was but a sorry exchange for the horses upon which Warcop had been wont to mount me; but if love of horse-flesh takes you that way—and take me that way it did—the veriest crock is better to bestride than nought. The day was fine, with sunshine and white fleets of blithely sailing cloud. Hedges and trees thickened with bud, and the rooks were nesting. I had made a long round by Madingley and Trumpington, and was walking my horse back slowly over the cobbles of King’s Parade—admiring, as how many times before, the matchless Chapel, springing from the greensward, its slender towers, pinnacles and lace-work of open parapet rising against spaces of mild blue sky—when, amid groups upon the pavement wearing cap and gown, or less ceremonial boating and football gear, a tall heavily built figure, clothed in a coat with bulging skirt-pockets to it, breeches and gaiters of pepper-and-salt-mixture, attracted my eye. The man halted now and again to stare at the fine buildings; and at last, crossing where the side street runs from King’s Parade to the Market Place, turned into the big bookseller’s at the corner. I thought I could hardly be mistaken as to his identity; and, calling a down-at-heels idler to hold my horse, I dismounted and followed him into the shop. If I had made a mistake, it would be easy to ask for some book or pamphlet and so cover my discomfiture. But I had made no mistake. Though older and greyer, his strong intellectual face more deeply lined by thought, and, as I feared, by care, Braithwaite himself confronted me. ‘Thou hast found me, O mine enemy,’ he exclaimed, while the clasp of his hand gave the lie to this doubtful form of greeting. ‘And, to tell the truth, I hoped you might do so; though I was in two minds about seeking you out and calling on you myself.’ I returned the clasp of his hand; but, for the moment, my heart was almost too full for speech. ‘Enemy, neither now nor at any time in our acquaintance,’ I faltered. ‘I know, I know,’ he answered. ‘But until you were your own master, and had finally cut adrift from certain high folks in high places, I reckoned we were best apart.’ ‘And you were right. Now, for good or evil, all that is over and done with’—and truly and honestly I believed what I said. ‘So much the better,’ he replied heartily. ‘Then we can start our friendship afresh—that is, of course, if an ornament of this ancient seat of learning, a full-fledged don like yourself, is not too fine and fastidious a person to associate with a plain middle-class man such as me.’