They were dirty, their clothes were torn, and the girl was so exhausted that she fell when she was still twenty feet from the front door.

Her blond hair was frowzy, her dress torn in several places, and her shoes were so completely worn out that they were practically no protection.

She was amazingly light, and so relaxed in his arms that he wasn't even sure she was conscious.

It was a fair fight, the boy provoked it -- Big Charlie told me so.

It was nice then, so peaceful and quiet.

The Gap looming before him -- the place where had confronted Jack English on that day so many years ago -- was his exit from all that had meaning to him.

Evidently this was a precaution so that mounts would be available in an emergency.

He grabbed her by the shoulders and went down on one knee, taking her weight so that some of the wind was driven out of him.

He had forgotten that she was so pretty.

The water was there, so much of it that it spread all through the dead orchard.

There was brush, and stands of pine that no grass could grow under, and places so steep that cattle wouldn't stop to graze.

clutched her throat and sucked up the moisture in her mouth so that her tongue was dry and hard and stuck to the roof of her mouth and her teeth were clenched together in the rigid fixture of her jaws.

He could move very quickly, she knew ( although he seldom found occasion to do so ), but he was more wiry than truly strong.

One thing was certain -- his method was effective, so effective that after a time even the warning notices were often unnecessary.

If we was both armed, you wouldn't talk so tough ''.

Seeing them waiting there at the foot of Emigrant Rock was so overwhelming that, for a good minute after they rounded the bend and started down the grade leading toward them, Matilda could not speak at all.

Against all expectation, Carmer was inside, clearly enjoying himself to the hilt and already so tipsy that it seemed unlikely he was bothering to note anything or anyone about him.

An Ah coudn ansuh him an so Ah said ' Aw right, Ah gay-ess, an his fathuh didn uttuh one wohd an aftuh Huhmun was gone, the majuh laughed an tole me thet he an the bawh had been hevin an occasional drink t'gethuh f'ovuh a yeah, onleh an occasional one, but just the same it was behahn mah back, an Ah doan think thet's nahce at all, d'you ''??

The way his red rubber lips were stretched across his pearly little teeth I thought he was only having a little joke, but, no, he wanted me to bend down from the roar of wind so he could roar something into my ear.

She was still hugging the stained coat around her, so I said, `` Relax, let me take your things.

Her face was very thin, and burned by the sun until much of the skin was dead and peeling, the new skin under it red and angry.

Yes, there was plenty of water, too much, and that was probably the trouble.

So simple, in fact, that it might even work -- although Pamela, now, in her new frame of mind, was careful not to pretend too much assurance.

He hated them too much to understand -- the people of this isolated law-unto-itself world that was Lord's world.

Such ranchers as Coble and Clay and the Bosler brothers carried him on their books as a cowhand even while he was receiving a much larger salary from parties unknown.

Curt was too involved in his own problems to pay much attention.

True, she was my Aunt, married to an Uncle related to me only by marriage, but why she had married a man twice her age, and more, perhaps, I did not know or much care.

Her mouth, which had been so much in my thoughts, was warm and moist and tender.

His advice, his voice saying his poems, the fact that he had not so much as touched her -- on the contrary, he had put his head back and she had stroked his hair -- this was all new.

Yet he did drop his badinage with the ordinary country girl as much in deference to the Grafin as acknowledgement that here, indeed, was something special.

He speaks your language too, for he is the grandson of a chieftain on Taui who made much magic and was strong and cunning.

There was a measure of protection in its concrete walls and ceiling, but the engineers who hastily installed it were well aware that concrete is not much better than prayer, if as efficacious, when a direct hit comes along.

Keith was on his feet because he didn't care at all about life any more: Penny on her feet, proudly, because she cared too much.

Now he was going to show how much he knew.

Thus, to cite but one example, the Pax Britannica of the nineteenth century, whether with the British navy ruling the seas or with the City of London ruling world finance, was strictly national in motivation, however much other nations ( e.g., the United States ) may have incidentally benefited.

We get some clue from a few remembrances of childhood and from the circumstance that we are probably not much more afraid of people now than man ever was.

The fear of disease was formerly very much the kind of fear I have tried to describe.

It was a brilliant debut, so much so indeed that it aroused a new vitality in the younger poets, as did Byron's Childe Harold.

Years ago this was true, but with the replacement of wires or runners by radio and radar ( and perhaps television ), these restrictions have disappeared and now again too much is heard.

That is to say Gabriel's fundamental law had been so much modified by this time that it was neither fundamental nor law any more.

During the decade that followed, the common man, as that piece put it, grew uncomfortable as the Voice of God and fled from behind Saint Woodrow ( Wilson ) only to learn from Science, to his shocked relief that after all there was no God he had to speak for and that he was just an animal anyhow -- that there was a chemical formula for him, and that too much couldn't be expected of him.