him, but that if they came he could not but use the best of his skill and wisdom to counsel them for their soul’s salvation; that he could preach and the people could come to hear without neglecting their callings, and that men were bound to look out for their souls’ welfare on week-days as well as Sundays.  Neither could convince the other.  Bunyan’s stubbornness was not a little provoking to Foster, and was equally disappointing to Wingate.  They both evidently wished to dismiss the case, and intentionally provided a loophole for Bunyan’s escape.  The promise put into his mouth—­“that he would not call the people together”—­was purposely devised to meet his scrupulous conscience.  But even if he could keep the promise in the letter, Bunyan knew that he was fully purposed to violate its spirit.  He was the last man to forfeit self-respect by playing fast and loose with his conscience.  All evasion was foreign to his nature.  The long interview came to an end at last.  Once again Wingate and Foster endeavoured to break down Bunyan’s resolution; but when they saw he was “at a point, and would not be moved or persuaded,” the mittimus was again put into the constable’s hands, and he and his prisoner were started on the walk to Bedford gaol.  It was dark, as we have seen, when this protracted interview began.  It must have now been deep in the night.  Bunyan gives no hint whether the walk was taken in the dark or in the daylight.  There was however no need for haste.  Bedford was thirteen miles away, and the constable would probably wait till the morning to set out for the prison which was to be Bunyan’s home for twelve long years, to which he went carrying, he says, the “peace of God along with me, and His comfort in my poor soul.”

CHAPTER V.

A long-standing tradition has identified Bunyan’s place of imprisonment with a little corporation lock-up-house, some fourteen feet square, picturesquely perched on one of the mid-piers of the many-arched mediaeval bridge which, previously to 1765, spanned the Ouse at Bedford, and as Mr. Froude has said, has “furnished a subject for pictures,” both of pen and pencil, “which if correct would be extremely affecting.”  Unfortunately, however, for the lovers of the sensational, these pictures are not “correct,” but are based on a false assumption which grew up out of a desire to heap contumely on Bunyan’s enemies by exaggerating the severity of his protracted, but by no means harsh imprisonment.  Being arrested by the warrant of a county magistrate for a county offence, Bunyan’s place of incarceration was naturally the county gaol.  There he undoubtedly passed the twelve years of his captivity, and there the royal warrant for his release found him “a prisoner in the common gaol for our county of Bedford.”  But though far different from the pictures which writers, desirous of exhibiting the sufferings of the Puritan confessor in the most telling form, have drawn—­if