"Fannie's hair!" very softly he repeated the words, holding it up
to the moonlight, and then turning it toward the lamp, as if to
assure himself that he really had it in his possession. "Why was
it never sent before?" he said at last, "or why was it sent at
all?" and taking up the letter, he read it through, lingering long
over the postscript, and grieving that Dora's message, the first
he had ever received, should be comparatively so cold.
"Why couldn't she have sent her _love_ to her poor old uncle,
who has nothing in the wide, wide world to love save this one lock
of hair! God bless you, Dora Deane, for sending that," and again
he raised it to his lips, saying as he did so, "And she shall have
the money, too, aye, more than Eugenia asked; _one golden dollar
for every golden hair_, will be a meet return!" And the old man
laughed aloud at the novel idea, which no one but himself would
have conceived. It was a long, weary task, the counting of those
hairs; for more than once, when he paused in his work to think of
her whose head they once adorned, he forgot how many had been
told, and patiently began again, watching carefully, through
blinding tears, to see that none were lost, for he would not that
one should escape him.
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