This recognition and friendly look in the man's face, touched Arthur, and, with a revival of eagerness, he felt that a ride would be just the thing to kill the time. So, ordering a horse to be sent to the hotel where he had left his luggage, he hurried back to get ready. III. As he rode back towards Oxford, two hours afterwards, the light was already fading from the winter sky. Sleepily and quietly he jogged along now, his horse tired at last after the quick gallop through grass lanes and over the wet fields and commons. The young man, too, was tired; but with a healthy, physical fatigue, pleasant in all his body. He felt almost happy after the motion, the wide light, the freshness of the air. And when he rode into the old city, walking his horse through the darkening streets, it seemed to him as if he were riding home now, as often he had ridden home into Oxford before, at just this hour of the twilight. The groups in the doorways, the lighted windows in the dim buildings, the sounds about him of bells and footsteps and friendly voices, brought back to him confusedly, mixed with the memory of this and that, the charm and comfort of that old life--that life of order and disciplined ways, and high old-fashioned purposes. How quietly the days had gone by: the mornings of work, the rides with friends, or afternoons on the river, between the yellowing autumn willows; the evenings with the white lamplight and pleasant talk and books. He had quarrelled with the restraint, the subordination, sometimes; had thought it too severe, too painful, to go out on the river in the wind and rain, to get up so early in the cold of winter mornings. But now, after the stale dissipation of his life, it was only the friendly warmth, the lazily-wasted hours he remembered, the pleasant fatigue after exercise, and the taste of the winter air when he had hurried out to chapel through the earliest sunlight. If he could only go back to it all; if, putting up his horse, he could walk to his rooms through the twilight, and find his books, and the fire burning there, and friends not far off! But things had been against him somehow. And yet he had meant it all to be so different. And with half a sigh he remembered the summer evenings when he and Austen had walked in the old garden, talking of their plans in life--of all they meant to do--together! if they could. But then, people never did remain friends like that. When he gave up his horse, however, he looked at his watch, and, after standing in hesitation for a moment, he turned with a sudden impulse, and walked quickly towards his old College.