"Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for Love is strong as death; Jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench Love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for Love, it would utterly be contemned."
"You read, sir?" he said interrogatively; and, putting on his spectacles, glanced over my shoulder.
"Ah! sir, fifty-eight years ago, I was young like you, and it was then I noted those two verses. You are young," he continued, "and perhaps have loved."
"No," I replied; "Heaven has not given me the opportunity of participating in one of its most essential blessings."
"Then, sir, Heaven has blessed you," he said. "I am old, you see; but I am alone in the world. Love has made me solitary." He sighed.
The old man seemed overcome with grief, and, desirous though I now was to hear his story, I dreaded to renew a sorrow, the intensity of which Time had not lessened. He drew forth in silence from his bosom, a miniature, suspended from his neck by a black ribbon, and with shaking hands he touched a spring, and held it unclapsed before me. It was the likeness of a girl about seventeen years of age. A loose robe partially covered her shoulders, and, the elbows resting on a kind of slab, her right cheek was cradled on the back of the left hand, the fingers of which touched her throat; and she looked, with laughing, light blue eyes, over her left shoulder. Her hair, parted slightly on one side, clustered in ringlets above a full, fair forehead; while a melancholy expression about her small, compressed mouth seemed to counteract the joyousness of the upper part of her countenance. The resemblance to the old man was striking.
"Sixty years ago, sir, I first saw that face, and it is as fresh in my memory as if I had only seen it yesterday. It was a face once to look on, to dream of for ever."
"It is very beautiful," I said, still gazing on the picture. "Was she your daughter?"
"Oh! no, sir, no. Would to God she had been!" the old man mournfully replied. "When, sir, I first saw that fair young creature, I was eighteen years of age, and she might have been seventeen. Endeavouring in vain to suppress the emotions which her beauty and amiable temper caused in my heart, I ventured one day to tell the father of Thora Rensel, for that was her name, the love I bore his daughter. Eric Rensel listened; and, when I had told my tale in words as fervent as my feelings, he replied, 'Engelbert Carlson, my daughter's hand is uncontrolled as her heart; win the girl's affections, and I will not stand in the way of your union.' I thanked Rensel with a grateful heart, and went forth to seek Thora.
"Do you see yonder hill?" said my narrator, pointing in the direction of a hill skirting some corn-fields before us; "there, close to that clump of elm-trees, stood Eric Rensel's cottage. Descending that hill, I met Thora, returning homewards, laden with a little basket full of fruit and flowers. She smiled when she observed me, and held out her hand, as she always did, in token of friendship. I hastened towards her, and, seizing the offered hand, pressed it warmly, and would have raised it to my lips, but I had not the courage.