We are now inside the compass of the ancient wall, and those who wish to keep up old illusions, and enter the city by the ancient road, should turn up Warwick Lane, alongside of the Grapes' Inn, avoiding modern Hertford Street, and so along Grey Friars' Lane to High Street and the main thoroughfare of the city. A little below the junction of the Warwick and Grey Friars' Lanes stands Ford's Hospital, a beautiful black and white timbered house with carved gables such as artists love. The windows are of nine lights, divided into threes, with window-headings of fine tracery. In a room over the porch called the chapel are oddments of stained glass. Some of the seventeen old women who are housed there, and daily bless, or should bless, the memory of Master Ford and Master Pisford, merchants, may often be seen sitting in the little inner quadrangular court. Worthy Master Pisford, by his will, dated 1517, made provision for six old men and their wives, "being nigh unto the age of threescore years and above, and such as were of good name and fame, and had been of good honesty and kept household within the said city, and were decayed and come to poverty and great need." Nowadays, however, it is only old women who profit by their benevolence. On reaching High Street, which is part of the great north-west road, and the old coaching way between London and Holyhead, it is best to go right on down Pepper Lane, which immediately faces you, until you come to S. Michael's churchyard. This broad open space was, and is still, the centre of the life of the town. Here stood the cathedral and the two great parish churches, the house containing the cloth market, and the guild-hall, where the rulers of the city assembled to take council together. Possibly while the churches, as we know them now, and S. Mary's Hall were yet unbuilt, the common assembly of city folk met together here to hold courts, and decide on questions touching the common weal. Now the cathedral and drapery are gone, but the church spire still stands fronting the spectator, and a few paces will bring him where, behind the projection of a small black and white cottage, stands the red and crumbling entrance porch of S. Mary's Hall. Tradition, which we can never afford to disregard, says that S. Michael's Church--spire, tower, chancel, and nave--was built by the Botoners, a great merchant family, further affirming that a brass plate was found in the church, with the following lines engraved upon it:-- "William and Adam built the tower, Ann and Mary built the spire, William and Adam built the church, Ann and Mary built the quire." Undoubtedly the Botoners were wealthy and generous folk, but whether this little quatrain is founded on fact or no, we have no means of proving.