I have seen no city
that stands more wonderfully than this of ours, with the grey walls of
the Roman town to crown the gathering of red and brown roofs that nestle
on the slope and within them. And ever as we drew nearer Havelok became
more silent, as I thought because he had never seen so great a town
before, until we passed the gates of the stockade that keeps the town
that lies without the old walls, and then he said, looking round him
strangely, "Brother, you will laugh at me, no doubt, for an arrant
dreamer, but this is the place whereto in dreams I have been many a
time. Now we shall come to yon turn of the road among the houses, and
beyond that we shall surely see a stone-arched gate in a great wall, and
spearmen on guard thereat."
It was so, and the gate and guard were before us in a few more steps. It
was the gate of the old Roman town, inside which was the palace of the
king and one or two more great houses only. Our English kin hate a
walled town or a stone house, and they would not live within the strong
walls, whose wide span was, save for the king's palace, which was built
partly of the house of the Roman governor, and these other halls, which
went for naught in so wide a meadow, empty and green, and crossed by two
paved roads, with grass growing between the stones. There were brown
marks, as of the buried stones of other foundations, on the grass where
the old streets had been.
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