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.

He found that if he was tired enough at night, he went to sleep simply because he was too exhausted to stay awake.

It was dark early, because of the storm.

I had come to New Orleans two years earlier after graduating college, partly because I loved the city and partly because there was quite a noted art colony there.

She softly let herself into the bed, and took her regular side, away from the door, where she slept better because Keith was between her and the invader.

And he knew that the men talked about him behind his back, saying that he was one up on everybody else -- including the pilot of the plane with the swastika on it -- because he was chemically incapable of fear.

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.

Back in the house a hoodlum named Red Buck, sore because Billy had been allowed to leave unscathed, jumped from a bunk and swore he was going after him to kill him right then.

That night he dreamed a dream violent with passion, in which he and the Woman, now the teacher, did everything except engage in the act ( and this probably only because he had never engaged in the act in reality ), and when he awoke the next morning his heart was afire.

Jack walked off alone out the road in the searing midday sun, past Robert Allen's three-room, tarpapered house, toward the field where the other boys were playing ball, thinking of what he would do in order to make Miss Langford have him stay in after school -- because this was the day he had decided when he thought he saw the look in her eyes.

That should do it, he thought, because Miss Langford had said she was going to be strict about school work.

This is puzzling to an outsider conscious of the classic tradition of liberalism, because it is clear that these Democrats who are left-of-center are at opposite poles from the liberal Jefferson, who held that the best government was the least government.

Sometimes I guessed it was because the rain squall had changed direction.

It was also subtly familiar, for it was the odor of the human body, but multiplied innumerable times because of the fact that the aborigines never bathed.

Their writings assume more than dramatic or patriotic interest because of their conviction that the struggle in which they were involved was neither selfish nor parochial but, rather, as Washington in his last wartime circular reminded his fellow countrymen, that `` with our fate will the destiny of unborn millions be involved ''.

Often it is recognized that all the details of the pattern may not be essential to the outcome but, because the pattern was empirically determined and not developed through theoretical understanding, one is never quite certain which behavior elements are effective, and the whole pattern becomes ritualized.

They never troubled themselves about us while we were playing, because the fence formed such a definite boundary and `` Don't go outside the gate '' was a command so impossible of misinterpretation.

They, perhaps, gave the pitch of their position in the preface where it was said that Eisenhower requested that the Commission be administered by the American Assembly of Columbia University, because it was non-partisan.

`` I hated the war '', he said, `` but thought I ought to go because I was, perhaps, one of those who hadn't done enough to prevent it ''.

I fled, however, not from what might have been the natural fear of being unable to disguise from you that the things about my bridegroom -- in the sense you meant the word `` things '' -- which you had been galvanizing yourself to tell me as a painful part of your maternal duty were things which I had already insisted upon finding out for myself ( despite, I may now say, the unspeakable awkwardness of making the discovery on principle, yes, on principle, and in cold blood ) because I was resolved, as a modern woman, not to be a mollycoddle waiting for Life but to seize Life by the throat.

It was the only thing in his life for which he felt guilt.

His looting of the orderly room had taken only a minute or two and the vicinity was still clear of guerrillas.

It was pitiful to see the thin ranks of warriors, old and young, wheeling and twisting their ponies frantically from side to side only to be tumbled bleeding from their saddles by the relentless slam, slam of the cruelly efficient Hawkinses.

The fire had gone down, and the man was only a shadow against the trees.

There was only one place where Jake Carwood's description had gone badly awry: the peace and quiet.

It was the only thing about her that was the least bit hard to remember.

under the circumstances I was only too willing to confess all.

only the counter at one end was lighted by a long fluorescent tube suspended directly above it.

On a shelf in the office behind the counter was a small radio dialed permanently on a station which broadcast only vulgar commercials and cheap popular music.

Once, pressing him, I learned that his job was only part-time, in the afternoons when nothing went on in the hall.

Though only a relatively short walk separated it from my own part of town, its character was wholly foreign to me.

The river was only a few blocks away but an unbroken line of piers prevented me from seeing it.

Although it was dark as usual I could see that the hall had only recently contained a great many people.

This desire, I went on, growing voluble as my conviction was aroused, had mounted at such a rate recently that I now found its realization necessary not only to my physical but also to my spiritual wellbeing.

The only reason we brought you was to get Miller out.

The only thing which would have attracted attention was that two wore the uniform of prison guards, three the striped suits of convicts.

He had belonged to this land and, perhaps, had desecrated it -- and this was the only material symbol that remained of him.

There was only one place where the mountain might receive her -- that unnamed, unnameable pool harbored in its secret bosom.

Now, he could only play the last card in what was probably the world's coldest deck.

He was only vaguely aware of the sluicing rain.

He paused only long enough to ascertain that Jess's buckskin was still missing and that his own gray was all right, then climbed through a back window and dropped to the ground outside.

There was no lock on the door, only an iron hook which he unfastened.

Again he stood in the darkness listening, but there was only the scrape of a shod hoof on a plank floor.