半截兒韁繩 Half A Length Of Bridle Rope
正尋覓處，只見那路傍邊斜軃著半截兒韁繩。他一把拿起，止不住眼中流淚，放聲叫道：「師父啊，我去時辭別人和馬，回來只見這些繩。」正是那：見鞍思俊馬，滴淚想親人。正寻觅处，只见那路傍边斜軃着半截儿缰绳。他一把拿起，止不住眼中流泪，放声叫道：「师父啊，我去时辞别人和马，回来只见这些绳。」正是那：见鞍思俊马，滴泪想亲人。
逐句解 Line by line
As they were casting about, they caught sight of half a length of bridle rope trailing crookedly at the side of the road.
傍 is páng here, the side of a thing. Modern Chinese writes that word with the man radical stripped off, but the novel keeps this fuller form throughout. The character is bàng when it means to lean on something, which it does not here. 軃 is a rare one: to hang slack, to droop. And 著 is zhe, the state that continues — it lies there trailing, and goes on trailing.
He picked it up, and could not hold back the tears in his eyes. He cried out, "Master! When I left I said goodbye to a man and a horse, and I come back to nothing but this piece of rope."
The half-rope is the same rope she bit through, and it has been lying in the road since. This is the only time in the chapter that Pilgrim weeps, and what produces it is not a threat or a defeat but a piece of severed cord. 中 is zhōng, inside — the tears in his eyes.
It was just as they say: seeing the saddle he thought of the fine horse; the tears fell as he thought of the one he loved.
見鞍思俊馬 is a saying, and its logic is the logic of grief everywhere: the object survives and the owner does not, so the object becomes unbearable. English has the same thought in a wardrobe full of somebody's clothes. 親人 is one's own people, the word for family — which is what a master has quietly become.
The chapter has been comic for four hundred characters and it stops being comic here, on a piece of rope. The switch is not signposted; the novel simply lets the object do the work.
The couplet that follows is a formula, and formulas usually flatten a moment. This one does not, because it names precisely the mechanism at work — the tack outlasts the horse, and the sight of it is what breaks him.