But he had been dead several hours when I arrived.

He had waked with a paralytic attack on him, which deprived him of the power of moving on the left side, and drawing his face awry, made speech almost impossible to him.
He assured his servant--who was almost immediately with him--speaking with much difficulty, that it was nothing of any importance, and that he should soon get over it.

But these were the last words he ever spoke, and in two or three hours afterwards he breathed his last.
Then in a few years more the _crescendo_ wave of trouble took my mother from me at the age of eighty-three.

For the last two or three years she had entirely lost her memory, and for the last few months the use of her mental faculties.

And she did not suffer much.