eems not to have been created by
his imagination, but to have been built up from well-remembered
landscapes. From his prison window he could not but see the ruins of old
Bedford Castle, which stood demolished upon its hill even in his time.
This, together with Cainhoe Castle, only a few miles away, may well have
suggested the Castle of Despair in Bypath Meadow near the River of God.
Again, memories of Elstow play a notable part in the story. A cross
stood there, at the foot of which, when he was playing the game of cat
upon a certain Sunday, the voice came to his soul with its tremendous
question, "Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven or have thy sins
and go to hell?" There stood the Moot Hall as it stands to-day, in
which, during his worldly days, he had danced with the rest of the
villagers and gained his personal knowledge of Vanity Fair. There, as he
tells us expressly, is the wicket gate, the rough old oak and iron gate
of Elstow parish church. Close beside it, just as you read in the story,
stands that great tower which suggested a devil's castle beside the
wicket gate, whence Satan showered his arrows on those who knocked
below. Not only so, but there was a special reason why for Bunyan that
ancient church tower may well have been symbolic of the stronghold of
the devil; for it had bells in it, and he was so fond of bell-ringing
that it got upon his conscience and became his darling sin. It is easy
to make light of his heart-searchings about so innocent an employment,
but doubtless there were other things that went along with it. We have
all seen those large drinking-vessels, known as bell-ringers' jugs; and
these perhaps may suggest an explanation of the sense of sin which
burdened his conscience so heavily. Anyhow, there the tower stands, and
in the Gothic doorway of it there are one or two deeply cut grooves,
obviously made by the ropes of the bell-ringers when, instead of
standing below their ropes, they preferred the open air, and drew the
ropes through the archway of the door, so as to cut into its moulding.
The little fact gains much significance in the light of Bunyan's own
confession that he was so afraid that the bell would fall upon him and
kill him as a punishment from God, that he used to go outside the door
to ring it. Then again there was the old convent at Elstow, where, long
before Bunyan's time, nuns had lived, who were known to tradition as
"the ladies of Elstow." Very aristocratic and very