Page:The pilgrim's progress by John Bunyan every child can read (1909).djvu/167

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THE SHEPHERDS CONDUCT THEM
155

The shepherds then answered, "Did you not see a little below these mountains a stile that led into a meadow on the left hand side of this way?" They answered, "Yes." Then said the shepherds, "From that stile there goes a path that leads directly to Doubting Castle, which is kept by Giant Despair; and these men" (pointing to them among the tombs) "came once on pilgrimage, as you do now, even until they came to that same stile. And because the right way was rough in that place, they chose to go out of it into that meadow, and there were taken by Giant Despair, and cast into Doubting Castle, where, after they had been kept a while in the dungeon, he at last did put out their eyes, and led them among those tombs, where he has left them to wander to this very day, that the saying of the Wise Man might be fulfilled, 'He that wandereth out of the way of knowledge, shall remain in the congregation of the dead.'" Then Christian and Hopeful looked upon one another with tears gushing out, but yet said nothing to the shepherds.

Then I saw in my dream, that the shepherds had them to another place in a bottom, where was a door on the side of a hill; and they opened the door, and bid them look in. They looked in, therefore, and saw that within it was very dark and smoky; they also thought that they heard there a rumbling noise, as of fire, and a cry of some tormented, and that they smelt the scent of brim-stone. Then said Christian, "What means this?"