Her father was still there.
Asleep?
Yes, for he had apparently sunk forward before the cold hearth.
But the hands that he had always been trying to warm were colder than the hearth or ashes, and he himself never again spoke nor stirred.
***** It was deemed providential by the neighbors that his youngest and favorite son, alarmed by news of his father's failing health, had arrived from the Atlantic States just at the last moment.

But it was thought singular that after the division of the property he entirely abandoned the Ranch, and that even pending the division his beautiful but fastidious Eastern bride declined to visit it with her husband.
JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN." It was growing dark, and the Sonora trail was becoming more indistinct before me at every step.

The difficulty had increased over the grassy slope, where the overflow from some smaller watercourse above had worn a number of diverging gullies so like the trail as to be undistinguishable from it.

Unable to determine which was the right one, I threw the reins over the mule's neck and resolved to trust to that superior animal's sagacity, of which I had heard so much.

But I had not taken into account the equally well-known weaknesses of sex and species, and Chu Chu had already shown uncontrollable signs of wanting her own way.