HR. Good brother, be not offended; I am sorry I have brought thee
out of the way, and that I have put thee into such imminent danger;
pray, my brother, forgive me; I did not do it of an evil intent.

HOPE. Be comforted, my brother, for I forgive thee; and believe,
too, that this shall be for our good.

CHR. I am glad I have with me a merciful brother; but we must not
stand thus: let us try to go back again.

HOPE. But, good brother, let me go before.

CHR. No, if you please, let me go first, that if there be any danger,
I may be first therein, because by my means we are both gone out
of the way.

{282} HOPE. No, said Hopeful, 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, "Set thine
heart toward the highway, even the way which thou wentest; turn
again." [Jer. 31:21] 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 adventured to go
back, but it was so dark, and the flood was so high, that in their
going back they had like to have been drowned nine or ten times.

{283} 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 the 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, and that they had lost their way. Then said
the Giant, You have this night trespassed on me, by trampling in
and lying on my grounds, and therefore you must go along with me.
So they were forced to go, because he was stronger than they. They
also had but little to say, for they knew themselves in a fault.
The Giant, therefore, drove them before him, and put them into his
castle, into a very dark dungeon, nasty and stinking to the spirits
of these two men. [Ps. 88:18] Here, then, they lay from Wedn