Page:The pilgrim's progress by John Bunyan every child can read (1909).djvu/180

168 were thinking about the way, behold, a man, black of flesh, but covered with a very light robe, came to them, and asked them why they stood there. They answered they were going to the Celestial City, but knew not which of these ways to take. "Follow me," said the man; "it is thither that I am going." So they followed him to the way that but now came into the road, which by degrees turned and turned them so from the city that they desired to go to, that, in a little time, their faces were turned away from it; yet they followed him. But by-and-by, before they were aware, he led them both within the folds of a net, in which they were both so entangled that they knew not what to do; and with that, the white robe fell off the black man's back. Then they saw where they were. Wherefore, there they lay crying some time, for they could not get themselves out.

Then said Christian to his fellow, "Now do I see myself in an error. Did not the shepherds bid us beware of flatterers? As is the saying of the Wise Man, so we have found it this day: 'A man that flattereth his neighbor, spreadeth a net at his feet.

They also gave us a note of directions about the way, for our more sure finding thereof; but therein we have also forgotten to read, and have not kept ourselves from the paths of the destroyer. Thus they lay bewailing themselves in the net. At last they espied a Shining One