But there seems about the whole affair much hollowness and “sounding brass.” Guy cuts off Colbrand’s head, and the Danes, seeing their champion dead, run away, and are pursued. We wonder whether Rudborne had been reading about David and Goliath. He was a monk of Winchester in the fifteenth century, and as he says that Colbrand’s axe was laid up before the high altar, and could in his day be seen in the vestry of the Cathedral, so we may assume there was here some celebrated Dane of the name of Colbrand. Further up the City Road the deep fosse before the walls can be traced in the slope of “Hyde Abbey Bowling Green,” and in the garden of a ladies school called Fossedyke House. In the centre of the cross roads here formed by Jewry Street, Hyde Street, and the City Road, stood the Northgate. This structure was at length considered, as Temple Bar has been in our times, to be a hindrance to traffic. Some people went so far as to say that their lives had been endangered by carriages when crossing its narrow bridge. Purchasers of hay and straw said that the arches of the North and South gates were so low that they could not obtain a full load for their money. Antiquaries have never been able to offer much resistance to commercial interests, and so in 1771 an order was made for the removal of the time-honoured obstacles. [Sidenote: Towers of the Wall.] The foundations of the walls now cross the road and run on our left, a fragment of them behind Westbury Villa can still be seen from the street; and if we look upwards we shall observe among the branches of the trees a round tower, which a patriotic citizen, Mr. Budden, has built to mark the foundations of one of the towers of the wall.[49] We now pass down Sussex Street, and turning to the left and then right, enter Tower Street. At the end of the last century the picturesque ruins of the wall, among shrubs and ash trees, ran here on the right to the Westgate. Passing through the gate, already described, we make for the barracks, where the Castle formed part of the city wall; and, crossing the railway, walk in front of the pretty gardens and houses of St. James’ Terrace, and just before recrossing the line see the entrance to the new cemetery on our right. Then we proceed down St. James’ Lane (called sometimes Barnes Lane), at the end of which in Southgate Street, just beyond St. Thomas’ Church, stood, till 1771, the Southgate with its bridge. The city wall then ran down between St. Swithun Street and Canon Street. Some portions of it three feet thick can still be seen about four yards behind the cottages, half way down the northern side of the latter street. There was formerly a postern for the friary somewhere here. [Illustration: King’s Gate.] The Kingsgate is an interesting relic. There is a little chapel (to St. Swithun) over it, as there was over the Northgate and Eastgate. In the porter’s lodge, at the entrance to the close, the city wall can be seen over six feet thick.