Sentence No. 96 · 1 July 2026
There were forty crows, and forty times the Scarecrow twisted a neck, until at last all were lying dead beside him.
L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
L. Frank Baum — The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) · Read it at Project Gutenberg
What holds this sentence together
Notice the two commas dividing this sentence into three movements: a setup, a repeated action, and a final outcome introduced by 'until'. When 'until' appears mid-sentence, it almost always points forward to a consequence, so the fragment beginning with it belongs near the end.
How it appears in Sentle
On Sentle this sentence arrives in 7 pieces, shuffled, with the lines that lead up to it for context. A clever defender stands alone against a flock of attackers. Putting it back in the author’s order is the puzzle — and the order is rarely arbitrary, which is what the note above is about.
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