his friends, Bunyan returned with them, though not with any expectation that the engagement proposed to him would be such as he could lawfully take. "If the words were such as he could say with a good conscience he would say them, or else he would not." After all this coming and going, by the time Bunyan and his friends got back to Harlington House, night had come on. As he entered the hall, one, he tells us, came out of an inner room with a lighted candle in his hand, whom Bunyan recognized as one William Foster, a lawyer of Bedford, Wingate's brother-in-law, afterwards a fierce persecutor of the Nonconformists of the district. With a simulated affection, "as if he would have leapt on my neck and kissed me," which put Bunyan on his guard, as he had ever known him for "a close opposer of the ways of God," he adopted the tone of one who had Bunyan's interest at heart, and begged him as a friend to yield a little from his stubbornness. His brother-in- law, he said, was very loath to send him to gaol. All he had to do was only to promise that he would not call people together, and he should be set at liberty and might go back to his home. Such meetings were plainly unlawful and must be stopped. Bunyan had better follow his calling and leave off preaching, especially on week-days, which made other people neglect their calling too. God commanded men to work six days and serve Him on the seventh. It was vain for Bunyan to reply that he never summoned people to hear 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.