y for their feet. But they had not gone
very far when it began to rain and thunder and lighten in a most
dreadful manner, and night came on apace, and stumbling along in the
darkness, they reached Doubting Castle, and the lord thereof, Giant
Despair, took them and threw them into a dark and dismal dungeon. Here
they lay for three days without one bit of bread or drop of drink. On
the third day Giant Despair came and flogged them with a great crabtree
cudgel, and so disabled them that they were not even able to rise up
from the mire of their dungeon floor. And indeed, they could scarcely
keep their heads above the mud in which they lay.

Now Giant Despair had a wife, and her name was Diffidence; and when she
found that, in spite of their flogging, Christian and Hopeful were still
alive, she advised her husband to kill them outright. It happened,
however, to be sunshiny weather, and sunshiny weather always made Giant
Despair fall into a helpless fit, in which he lost for the time the use
of his hands. So all he could do was to try and persuade his prisoners
to kill themselves with knife or halter.

"Why," said he to Christian and Hopeful, "should you choose to live? You
know you can never get out of Doubting Castle. What! Will you slowly
starve to death like rats in a hole, instead of putting a sudden end to
your misery, like men. I tell you again, you will never get out."

But when he was gone, Christian and Hopeful went down on their knees in
their dungeon and prayed long and earnestly. Then Christian suddenly
bethought himself, and after fumbling in his bosom, he drew out a key,
saying, "What a fool am I to lie in a dismal dungeon when I can walk at
liberty! Here is the key that I have been carrying in my bosom, called
Promise, that will open every lock in Doubting Castle."

He at once tried it at the dungeon door, and turned the bolt with ease.
He then led Hopeful to the iron gate of the castle, and though the lock
went desperately hard, yet the key opened it. But as the gate moved, it
made such a creaking that Giant Despair was aroused.

Hastily rising up, the giant set out to pursue the prisoners; but seeing
that all the land was now flooded with sunshine, he fell into one of his
helpless fits, and could not even get as far as the castle gate.

_III.--The Celestial City_

Having thus got safely out of Doubting Castle, Christian and Hopeful
made their way back to the banks of the river of life, and, followi