Page:The pilgrim's progress by John Bunyan every child can read (1909).djvu/155

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DOUBTING CASTLE
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if there be any danger, I may be first therein, because by my means we are both gone out of the way.

Hope. "No, you shall not go first; for your mind being troubled may lead you out of the way again." Then for their encouragement they heard the voice of one saying, "Let thine heart be towards the highway, even the way that thou wentest; turn again." But by this time the waters were greatly risen, by reason of which the way of going back was very dangerous. (Then I thought that it is easier going out of the way when we are in, than going in when we are out.) Yet they undertook to go back; but it was so dark, and the flood so high, that, in their going back, they had like to have been drowned nine or ten times.

Neither could they, with all the skill they had, get again to the stile that night. Wherefore, at last lighting under a little shelter, they sat down there until daybreak; but, being weary, they fell asleep. Now, there was, not far from the place where they lay, a castle, called Doubting castle the owner whereof was Giant Despair, and it was in his grounds they now were sleeping; wherefore he, getting up in the morning early, and walking up and down in his fields, caught Christian and Hopeful asleep in his grounds. Then, with a grim and surly voice, he bid them awake, and asked them whence they were, and what they did in his grounds. They told him they were pilgrims,