he tells us, at one time, being but “a young prisoner,” greatly troubled by the thoughts that “for aught he could tell,” his “imprisonment might end at the gallows,” not so much that he dreaded death as that he was apprehensive that when it came to the point, even if he made “a scrabbling shift to clamber up the ladder,” he might play the coward and so do discredit to the cause of religion.  “I was ashamed to die with a pale face and tottering knees for such a cause as this.”  The belief that his imprisonment might be terminated by death on the scaffold, however groundless, evidently weighed long on his mind.  The closing sentences of his third prison book, “Christian Behaviour,” published in 1663, the second year of his durance, clearly point to such an expectation.  “Thus have I in few words written to you before I die, . . . not knowing the shortness of my life, nor the hindrances that hereafter I may have of serving my God and you.”  The ladder of his apprehensions was, as Mr. Froude has said, “an imaginary ladder,” but it was very real to Bunyan.  “Oft I was as if I was on the ladder with a rope about my neck.”  The thought of it, as his autobiography shows, caused him some of his deepest searchings of heart, and noblest ventures of faith.  He was content to suffer by the hangman’s hand if thus he might have an opportunity of addressing the crowd that he thought would come to see him die.  “And if it must be so, if God will but convert one soul by my very last words, I shall not count my life thrown away or lost.”  And even when hours of darkness came over his soul, and he was tempted to question the reality of his Christian profession, and to doubt whether God would give him comfort at the hour of death, he stayed himself up with such bold words as these.  “I was bound, but He was free.  Yea, ’twas my duty to stand to His word whether He would ever look on me or no, or save me at the last.  If God doth not come in, thought I, I will leap off the ladder even blindfold into Eternity, sink or swim, come heaven, come hell.  Lord Jesus, if Thou wilt catch me, do.  If not, I will venture for Thy name.”

Bunyan being precluded by his imprisonment from carrying on his brazier’s craft for the support of his wife and family, and his active spirit craving occupation, he got himself taught how to make “long tagged laces,” “many hundred gross” of which, we are told by one who first formed his acquaintance in prison, he made during his captivity, for “his own and his family’s necessities.”  “While his hands were thus busied,” writes Lord Macaulay, “he had often employment for his mind and for his lips.”  “Though a prisoner he was a preacher still.”  As with St. Paul in his Roman chains, “the word of God was not bound.”  The prisoners for conscience’ sake, who like him, from time to time, were cooped up in Bedford gaol, including several of his brother ministers and some of his old friends among the leading members of his own little church,