y--apprehension.
The intervals of silence grew progressively longer; the delays became
maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in
strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife; he
feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch.

He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. "If I could free
my hands," he thought, "I might throw off the noose and spring into the
stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously,
reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home. My home, thank God,
is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond
the invader's farthest advance."

As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed
into the doomed man's brain rather than evolved from it the captain
nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside.

II

Peyton Farquhar was a well-to-do planter, of an old and highly respected
Alabama family. Being a slave owner and like other slave owners a
politician he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently
devoted to the Southern cause. Circumstances of an imperious nature,
which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking
service with the gallant army that had fought the disastrous campaigns
ending with the fall of Corinth, and he chafed under the inglorious
restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of
the soldier, the opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt,
would come, as it comes to all in war time. Meanwhile he did what he
could. No service was too humble for him to perform in aid of the South,
no adventure too perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the
character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good
faith and without too much qualification assented to at least a part of
the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war.

One evening while Farquhar and his wife were sitting on a rustic bench
near the entrance to his grounds, a gray-clad soldier rode up to the
gate and asked for a drink of water. Mrs. Farquhar was only too happy to
serve him with her own white hands. While she was fetching the water her
husband approached the dusty horseman and inquired eagerly for news from
the front.

"The Yanks are repairing the railroads," said the man, "and are getting
ready for another advance. They have reached the Owl Creek bridge, put
it in order