: so good, so gentle, so kind, so loyal, so
frank with the great, so tender to the poor, so truthful of speech, so
modest regarding his own merit, so true a gentleman, in a word, that
anybody might, with reason, deplore him.

As Wamba opened the dear knight's corselet, he found a locket round
his neck, in which there was some hair; not flaxen like that of my
Lady Rowena, who was almost as fair as an Albino, but as black, Wamba
thought, as the locks of the Jewish maiden whom the knight had rescued
in the lists of Templestowe. A bit of Rowena's hair was in Sir Wilfrid's
possession, too; but that was in his purse along with his seal of arms,
and a couple of groats: for the good knight never kept any money, so
generous was he of his largesses when money came in.

Wamba took the purse, and seal, and groats, but he left the locket of
hair round his master's neck, and when he returned to England never said
a word about the circumstance. After all, how should he know whose hair
it was? It might have been the knight's grandmother's hair for aught the
fool knew; so he kept his counsel when he brought back the sad news and
tokens to the disconsolate widow at Rotherwood.

The poor fellow would never have left the body at all, and indeed sat
by it all night, and until the gray of the morning; when, seeing two
suspicious-looking characters advancing towards him, he fled in dismay,
supposing that they were marauders who were out searching for booty
among the dead bodies; and having not the least courage, he fled from
these, and tumbled down the breach, and never stopped running as fast as
his legs would carry him, until he reached the tent of his late beloved
master.

The news of the knight's demise, it appeared, had been known at his
quarters long before; for his servants were gone, and had ridden off
on his horses; his chests were plundered: there was not so much as a
shirt-collar left in his drawers, and the very bed and blankets had been
carried away by these FAITHFUL attendants. Who had slain Ivanhoe? That
remains a mystery to the present day; but Roger de Backbite, whose nose
he had pulled for defamation, and who was behind him in the assault at
Chalus, was seen two years afterwards at the court of King John in
an embroidered velvet waistcoat which Rowena could have sworn she had
worked for Ivanhoe, and about which the widow would have made some
little noise, but that--but that she was no longer a widow.

That she truly dep