2.  It was a sight to see poor Mr. Fearing at the wicket gate.  “Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”  He read the inscription over the gate a thousand times, but every time he read it his slough-filled heart said to him, Yes, but that is not for such as you.  Pilgrim after pilgrim came up the way, read the writing, knocked, and was taken in; but still Mr. Fearing stood back, shaking and shrinking.  At last he ventured to take hold of the hammer that hung on the gate and gave with it a small rap such as a mouse might make.  But small as the sound was, the Gatekeeper had had his eye on his man all the time out of his watch-window; and before Mr. Fearing had time to turn and run, Goodwill had him by the collar.  But that sudden assault only made Mr. Fearing sink to the earth, faint and half-dead.  “Peace be to thee, O trembling man!” said Goodwill.  “Come in, and welcome!” When he did venture in, Mr. Fearing’s face was as white as a sheet.  You would have said that an officer had caught a thief if you had seen poor Mr. Fearing hiding his face, and the Gatekeeper hauling him in.  And not all the entertainment for which the Gate was famous, nor all the encouragement that Goodwill was able to speak, could make terrified Mr. Fearing for once to smile.  A more hard-to-entertain pilgrim, all the Gate declared when he had gone, they had never had in their hospitable house.

3.  “So he came,” said the guide, “till he came to our House; but as he behaved himself at the Gate, so he did at my Master the Interpreter’s door.  He lay about in the cold a good while before he would adventure to call.  Yet he would not go back neither.  And the nights were cold and long then.  At last I think I looked out of the window, and perceiving a man to be up and down about the door, I went out to him, and asked what he was; but, poor man, the water stood in his eyes.  So I perceived what he wanted.  I went in, therefore, and told it in the house, and we showed the thing to our Lord.  So He sent me out again to entreat him to come in, but I dare say I had hard work to do it.  At last he came in, and I will say that for my Lord, He carried it wonderful lovingly to Mr. Fearing.  There were but a few good bits at the table, but some of it was laid upon his trencher.”  In this way the guide tells us his first introduction to Mr. Fearing, and how Mr. Fearing behaved himself in the Interpreter’s House.  For instance, in the parlour full of dust, when the Interpreter said that the dust is original sin and inward corruption, you would have thought that the Interpreter had stabbed poor Mr. Fearing to the heart, so did he break out and weep.  Before the damsel could come with the pitcher, Mr. Fearing’s eyes alone would have laid the dust, they were such a fountain of tears.  When he saw Passion and Patience, each one in his chair—­“I am that child in rags,” said Mr. Fearing; “I have already received all my good things!” Also, at the wall where the