Written in the persona of Harry Wylie, companion of the rebel John Bunyan, corrupted by the village blasphemer in his youth, who gives his eyewitness version of the life of Bunyan, including their service in the English Civil War, the various trials of Bunyan, and his imprisonment, where Harry has become jailer; Harry believes people never change, and Bunyan’s principled stand against civil tyranny he long dismisses as yet another expression of his rebellion.