. And, I promise you he footed it well; the lame man
leaped as an hart; also the girl was to be commended, for she answered
the music handsomely. In spite of his life-long infirmity, there was
deep down in Mr. Ready-to-halt an unsuspected fund of good-humour. There
was no heartier merriment on the green that day than was the merriment
that Mr. Ready-to-halt knocked out of his nimble crutch. "True, he could
not dance without one crutch in his hand." True, dear and noble Bunyan,
thou canst not write a single page at any time or on any subject without
thy genius and thy tenderness and thy divine grace marking the page as
thine own alone!

5. The next time we see Mr. Ready-to-halt he is coming in on his
crutches to see Christiana, for she has sent for him to see him. So she
said to him, "Thy travel hither hath been with difficulty, but that will
make thy rest the sweeter." And then in process of time there came a
post to the town and his business this time was with Mr. Ready-to-halt.
"I am come to thee in the name of Him whom thou hast loved and followed,
though upon crutches. And my message is to tell thee that He expects
thee at His table to sup with Him in His kingdom the next day after
Easter." "I am sent for," said Mr. Ready-to-halt to his fellow-pilgrims,
"and God shall surely visit you also. These crutches," he said, "I
bequeath to my son that shall tread in my steps, with an hundred warm
wishes that he may prove better than I have done." Isaac was a child of
promise, and Mr. Ready-to-halt had an Isaac also on whom his last
thoughts turned. Isaac had been born to Abraham by a special and
extraordinary and supernatural interposition of the grace and the power
of God; and Mr. Ready-to-halt had always looked on himself as a second
Abraham in that respect. A second Abraham, and more. True, his son was
not yet a pilgrim; perhaps he was too young to be so called; but
Greatheart will take back the old man's crutches--Greatheart was both man-
of-war and beast-of-burden to the pilgrims and their wives and
children--and will in spare hours teach young Ready-to-halt the use of
the crutch, till the son can use with the same effect as his father his
father's instrument. Is your child a child of promise? Is he to you a
product of nature, or of grace? Did you receive him and his brothers and
sisters from God after you were as good as dead? Did you ever steal in
when his nurse was at supper and say over his young c