sh himself,
and then began to go up the hill, saying--

'The hill, though high, I covet to ascend;
The difficulty will not me offend;
For I perceive the way to life lies here.
Come, pluck up heart, let's neither faint nor fear,
Better, though difficult, the right way to go,
Than wrong, though easy, where the end is woe.

The other two also came to the foot of the hill. But, when they saw that
the hill was steep and high, and that there were two other ways to go;
and supposing also that these two ways might meet again with that up
which Christian went, on the other side of the hill; therefore, they
were resolved to go in those ways. Now the name of one of those ways was
Danger, and the name of the other Destruction. So the one took the way
which is called Danger, which led him into a great wood; and the other,
took directly up the way to Destruction, which led him into a wide
field, full of dark mountains, where he stumbled and fell, and rose no
more."

Now that is exactly the way in which the pilgrims might have separated
and gone their own ways at a dozen places along the road to Canterbury.
Take, to begin with, the joining and the parting of the ways at Farnham.
Pilgrims would meet there, as we have seen, coming through Winchester,
from Normandy, or by the Harrow Way from Salisbury Plain, from Wales,
from Ireland, and all the West of England. But they would not all
necessarily leave by the road that runs straight from Farnham to the
foot of the Hog's Back. Some would have letters to the Abbot of
Waverley, would spend a night at the Abbey two miles to the south-east,
and join the others perhaps at Puttenham, six miles further along the
Way. Then, among those who chose to travel straight to the western slope
of the Hog's Back, there would be different minds at the foot of the
hill. Some would climb the hill at Whitewaysend--the white way of the
chalk would begin for them there--and would stride along in the sunlight
the seven straight miles to Guildford. Others would prefer to keep to a
path under the hill, stopping at the churches and gossiping at the inns.
You can trace the old road clearly through Seale to Puttenham, where it
must have travelled south of the church door, instead of taking the
awkward and unnecessary turn to the north which is taken by the modern
road. Then at Puttenham the pilgrims would divide again. Some would
journey straight on across Puttenham Heath, heading towards S