forgot. An alehouse-keeper in the
neighbourhood of Elstow had a son who was half-witted. The favourite
amusement, when a party was collected drinking, was for the father to
provoke the lad's temper, and for the lad to curse his father and wish
the devil had him. The devil at last did have the alehouse-keeper, and
rent and tore him till he died. 'I,' says Bunyan, 'was eye and ear
witness of what I here say. I have heard Ned in his roguery cursing
his father, and his father laughing thereat most heartily, still
provoking of Ned to curse that his mirth might be increased. I saw his
father also when he was possessed. I saw him in one of his fits, and
saw his flesh as it was thought gathered up in an heap about the
bigness of half an egg, to the unutterable torture and affliction of
the old man. There was also one Freeman, who was more than an ordinary
doctor, sent for to cast out the devil, and I was there when he
attempted to do it. The manner whereof was this. They had the
possessed in an outroom, and laid him upon his belly upon a form, with
his head hanging down over the form's end. Then they bound him down
thereto; which done, they set a pan of coals under his mouth, and put
something therein which made a great smoke--by this means, as it was
said, to fetch out the devil. There they kept the man till he was
almost smothered in the smoke, but no devil came out of him, at which
Freeman was somewhat abashed, the man greatly afflicted, and I made to
go away wondering and fearing. In a little time, therefore, that which
possessed the man carried him out of the world, according to the
cursed wishes of his son.'

[Footnote 1: The story is told by Mr. Attentive in the 'Life of Mr.
Badman;' but it is almost certain that Bunyan was relating his own
experience.]

The wretched alehouse-keeper's life was probably sacrificed in this
attempt to dispossess the devil. But the incident would naturally
leave its mark on the mind of an impressionable boy. Bunyan ceased to
frequent such places after he began to lead a religious life. The
story, therefore, most likely belongs to the experiences of his first
youth after he left school; and there may have been many more of a
similar kind, for, except that he was steady at his trade, he grew up
a wild lad, the ringleader of the village apprentices in all manner of
mischief. He had no books, except a life of Sir Bevis of Southampton,
which would not tend to sober him; indeed, he soon forgot