The Mercury arrived at Ludlow long before Vanrenen crossed the Wye Bridge at Hereford. Medenham stopped the car at "The Feathers," that famous magpie among British Inns, where Cynthia admired and photographed some excellent woodcarving, and saw an iron-studded front door which has shut out revellers and the night on each alternate round of the clock since 1609, if not longer. If they hurried over luncheon they were content to dawdle in the picturesque streets, and Cynthia was reluctant to leave the fine old castle, in which Milton's "Masque of Comus" was first played on Michaelmas night of 1634. At first, she yielded only to the flood of memories pent in every American brain when the citizen of the New World stands in one of these treasure-houses of history and feels the passing of its dim pageants; when they stood together in the ruined banqueting hall, Medenham gave play to his imagination, and strove to reconstruct a scene once spread before the bright eyes of a maiden long since dead. "You will please regard yourself," he said, "as the Lady Alice Egerton, daughter of the Earl of Bridgwater, Lord President of the Marches of Wales, who, with her two brothers, was benighted in the Forest of Heywood while riding to Ludlow to witness her father's installation in his high office. Milton was told of her adventures by Henry Lawes, the musician, and he wrote the 'Masque of Comus' to delight her and her friends. Have you read 'Comus'?" "No," said Cynthia, almost timidly, for she was beginning to fear this masterful man whose enthusiasm caught her to his very soul at such moments. "Ah, but you shall. It ranks high among the miracles of English poetry wrought by Milton. Many a mile from Ludlow have I called to mind one of its incomparable passages: A thousand phantasies Begin to throng into my memory-- Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire, And airy tongues that syllable men's names On sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses. And now you, the heroine of the masque, must try to imagine that you are lost in a wild wood represented by a carpet spread here, in the center of the hall. Seated there on a dais, is your father the Earl, surrounded by his officers and retainers. Near you are your brothers, Lord Brackley and Thomas Egerton, so blinded by sprites that they cannot see you, though keen enough to note the bright eyes and flushed cheeks of other ladies of high degree bidden to Ludlow from neighboring shires for the merry-making. And mark you, this is no rude gathering of unlettered squires and rough men-at-arms. How is it possible that an uncultured throng should listen rapturously to the noblest performance of the kind that exists in any language, wherein each speech is a majestic soliloquy, eloquent, sublime, with an uncloying word-music acclaimed by three centuries?"