I robbed him of one thing more--this!" All his
haggard face was transfigured with a ghastly triumph as he opened a
small leathern case that hung round his neck, and held up before us two
locks of hair.
There they were--the love-gift and the death-spoil--the memorials of
defeat and of victory, of foiled affection and of gratified hate--the
one, beguiled from Isabel by Bruce himself, with many earnest pleadings,
in the early days of their engagement; the other, torn from her
husband's temples before they were cold. The long light brown tress was
scarcely more soft and satin-smooth than the chestnut curl; but one end
of the last was matted, and discolored by a dark rusty stain--the stain
that, the Greek poet said, all the rivers of earth flowing in one
channel could never wash away--the testimony, to our ears mute enough
now, but which, perhaps, will make itself heard above the Babel of all
other cries at the Day of Judgment.
The two tokens were twined together lovingly, as if they were sensitive
and conscious still. Bruce plucked them asunder: "I never can keep them
apart," he said, querulously. Then he put them back into the case
separately, and began to mutter to himself many words that I could not
distinguish.
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