He did not go mad, but at last, with the instinct of the homing pigeon, fled to Cambridge. There at least would he be able to pick up some threads of life left straggling twenty years ago. Only when he had gone half-way did he remember that it was the Long Vacation, so long had he lived indifferent to times and seasons. Doubtless, however, the Long Vacation Term was in progress as usual and the official dons in residence. But who would there be, after twenty years, in spite of the proverbial longevity of dons? Who now was master of his college? When he left, Fordyce was getting a bit elderly. Why, of course, by now, if alive, he would be over ninety. Fordyce must have been gathered long ago to his fathers. Who could have succeeded him? Why hadn’t he looked it up in a book of reference? It seemed stupid to return to his own college without knowing the name of the master. Who were the prominent people? Westgrove, the senior tutor; Barrett, senior dean; Withington, junior dean; Raymond, bursar; Smith, Hartwell, Grayson, Mostyn—men more or less of his own standing; Sheepshanks, the famous mathematical coach upon whose shoulders had fallen the mantle of the immortal Routh (maker of senior wranglers), and his own private tutor and friend. There would be somebody there out of all that lot, at any rate. He felt more hopeful. A grizzled porter threw his suit-case into a hansom cab, a welcome survival of his youth, and in answer to his query whether the “Blue Boar” was still in existence, stared at him as though he had questioned the stability of the great court of Trinity or Matthews, the Grocers. “The ‘Blue Boar,’ sir? Why, of course, sir.” So to that ancient hostelry Baltazar drove down Trumpington Street. It seemed all new and perky until he came to the great landmark, the Fitzwilliam Museum. Then in a flash he recaptured his Cambridge: Peterhouse on his left; Pembroke on his right; the three-sided, low, bricked court of St. Catherine’s facing the dignified stone front and gateway of Corpus; then the amazing grandeur of King’s College Chapel—he craned his head out and drank in its calm loveliness; then the Senate House; on the right the shops of the King’s Parade, just as they used to be; then Caius, and the cab drew up at the “Blue Boar.”