At last, the
second day, after being denied at seven successive houses, we
found quite the refuge we wanted in the Bootham, which means very
much more than the ignorant reader can imagine. Our upper rooms
looked on a pretty grassy garden space behind, where there was
sun when there was sun, and in front on the fine old brick
dwellings of a most personable street, with a sentiment of bygone
fashion. At the upper end of it was a famous city gate--Bootham
Bar, namely--with a practicable portcullis, which we verified at
an early moment by going up into "the chamber over the gate,"
where it was once worked, and whence its lower beam, set thick
with savage spikes, was dropped. Outside the gate there was a
sign in the wall saying that guards were to be had there to guide
travellers through the Forest of Galtres beyond Bootham, and keep
them from the wolves. Now woods and wolves and guards are all
gone, and Bootham Bar is never closed.
The upper room is a passageway for people who are walking round
the town on the Plantagenet wall, and one morning we took this
walk in sunshine that befitted the Sabbath.
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