they returned with the message that if Bunyan would wait on the
magistrate and "say certain words" to him, he might go free. To satisfy
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,