THE STORY-TELLER. Hanged by the Federals.

Evening Post, Volume LIII, Issue 114, 15 May 1897, Page 2

THE STORY-TELLER. Hanged by the Federals.

A man stood upon a railroad bridge in Northern Alabama, looking down into the ' swift waters 20 feet below The prisoner had been caught in the aot of tampering with the security of Owl Creek-bridge. The commandant had issued an order that any civilian caught interfering with the railway or its bridges should be summarily hanged. The man's hands ware behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope loosely enciroled his neok. It was attached to a stout cross timber above his head, and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him, and his executioners were two private soldieru of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant, who In oivil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of Bis rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel was placed at eaoh end of the bridge. The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about 36 years of age, He was a civilian, if one might judge from his dress, which was that of v planter. His features were good— a straight nose, (firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long dark hair was combed straight hack, faltiug behind his ears to the collar of his well-fitting frook coat. He wore a moustache and pointed beard, but no whiskers; his eyes were large and dark grey, and had a kindly expression, which one would hardly have expected in one whose neok was in the hemp. Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military oode makes provision for hanging many kinds of people, and gentlemen are not excluded. The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers stepped aside, and each drew away the plank upon which ho had been standing. The sergeant turned to the captain, saluted, and placed himself immediately behind that officer, who in turn moved apart one pace. These movements left the condemned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the same plank, whioh spanned three of the cross-ties of the bridge. The end upon which the civilian stood almost, but not quite, reached a fourth. This plank had been held in place by the weight of the captain; it was now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former the latter would step aside, the plank would tilt, and the condemned man would go down between two ties. The arrangement commended itself to Ms judgment as simple and effeotive. His face had not been covered, nor his eyes bandaged. He looked a moment at his "unsteadfast footing," then let his gaze wander to the swirling waters of the stream racing madly beneath his feet. A piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention, and his eyes followed it down the current. How slowly it appeared to move! What a sluggish stream ! He olosed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children. The water, touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some distance down the stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift — all had distracted him. And now he became conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear ones was a sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic, percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil it had the same lingiug quality. Ho wondered what it was, and whoiher immeasurably distant or near by— it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He waited each stroke with impatience and, he knew not why, 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 can 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 let 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. As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge he lost consciousness, and was as one already dead. From this state he was awakened — ages later, it seemed to him— by the pain of a sharp pressure upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation. Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward throngh every fibre of his body and limbs. These pains appeared to flash along well-defined lines of ramification, and to beat with an inconceivably rapid periodicity. They seemed like streams of pulsating fire heating him to an intolerable temperature. As to his head, he was conscious of nothing but a feeling of fulness — of congestion. These sensations were unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced ; he hud power only to feel, and feeling was torment. He was conscious of motion. Encompassed in a luminous cloud of which he was now merely the fiery heart, without material substance, he swung throngh unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum. Then all at once, with terrible suddenness, the light . above him shot upward with the noise of a - loud splash ; a frightful roaring was in his • ears, and all was cold and dark. The ■power of thought was restored; he knew ' that the tope had broken and he had fallen .into the stream. There was no additional .strangulation; the noose about his neck was already suffocating him, and kept the - water from his lungs. s He was notconscious of an effort, but a sharp pain in his wrists apprised him that he was trying to free his hands. He gave ' the struggle nis attention, as an idler might ' observe the feat of a juggler, without interest in the outcome. What splendid - effort ! — what magnificent, what super- < human strength ! Ah, that was a fine • endeavour .' Bravo ! The cord fell away ; his arms parted and floated upward, the 'hands dimly seen on each side in the growing light. He watched them with anew interest as first one and then the other •pounced npon the noose at his neck. They tore it away and thrust it fiercely aside, its undulations resembling those of a water ! tnaka. '" Put it buck, put it back ! " He thought he shouted these words to bin hands, for tho undoing of the noose had been succeeded by the direst pang which he had experienced. His neck ached horribly ; his brain was on fire ; his heart, which bad been fluttering faintly, gave a great leap, trying to force itself ont at his moutb. His whole body was racked and wrenched with an insupportable anguish ! But his disobedient hands gave no heed to the command. They beat the water vigorously with quick downward strokes, forcing him to the surface. He felt his head emerge ; his eyes were blinded by the sunlight ; his chest expanded convulsively, and With a supreme and crowning agony his lungs engulfed a great draught of air, which instantly he expelled in a shriek ! He was now in full possession of his physical senses. They were indeed preten.aturally keen and alert. Something in Iho awful disturbances of his organic &ybtem had. so exalted and refined them that they made record of things never before perceived. He had come to the

surface face down the stream ; in a moment the visible world seemed to wheel slowly round, himself the pivotal point, and he saw the bridge, the fort, the soldiers upon the bridge, the captain, the sergeant, the two privates, his executioners. They were in silhouette against the clear sky. They shouted and gesticulated, pointing at him ; the captain had drawn his pistol, but did not fire , the others were unarmad. Their movements were grotesque and horrible, their forms gigantic. Suddenly he heard a sharp report, and something struck the water within a few inches of his head, spattering his face with spray. He heard a second report, and saw one of the sentinels with his rifle at his shoulder, a light cloud of blue smoke rising from the muzzle. The man in the water saw the eye of the man on the bridge glaring into his own through the sights of the rifle. He observed that it was a grey eye, and remembered having read that grey eyes were keenest and that all famous marksmen had them. Nevertheless, this one had missed. A counter-swirl had oaught Farquhar and turned him half round ; he was again looking into the forest on the bank opposite the fort. The sound of a clear, high voice in a monotonous sing-song nbw rang' out behind him and came across the water with a distinctness that pierced and subdued all other sounds, even the beating of the ripples in his ears. Although no soldier, he had frequented camps enough to know the dread significance of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated chant ; the lieutenant on shore was taking a part in the morning's work. How cold and pitilessly — with what an even, calm intonation, presaging and enforcing tranquillity in the men — with what accurately measured intervals fell those cruel words, "Attention, company. Shoulder arms. Beady. Aim. Fire ! " Farquhar dived— dived as deeply as he could. Tho water roared in his ears like the voice of Niagara, yet he heard the dulled thunder of the volley, and, rising again towards the surface, met shining bits of metal, singularly flattened, oscillating slowly downward. Some of them touched him on the face and hands, and fell away, i continuing their descent. One lodged t between his collar and neck ; it was uncomfortably warm, and he snatched it out. As he rose to the surface gasping for breath, he saw that he had been a long time uuder water ; he was perceptibly further down stream — nearer to safety. The soldiers had I almost finished reloading ; the metal ram ■ j rods flashed all at once in the sunshine as they were drawn from the barrels, turned in the air, and thrust into their sockets The two sentinels fired again, independently and ineffectually. The hunted man saw all this over his shoulder ; he was now swimming vigorously ! with the current. His brain was as energetic as his arms and legs ; he thought with the rapidity of lightning. 'The officer," he reasoned, " will not make that martinet's error a second time. It was as easy to dodge a volley as a single shot. He has probably already given the command to fire at will. God help me, I cannot dodge them all ! " An appalling Bplash within two yards of him, followed by a loud rush, ing sound, diminuendo, which seemed to travel back through the air to the fort and died into an explosion which stirred the very river to its deeps ! A rising sheet of water, whioh curved over him, fell down upon him, blinded him, strangled him .' The cannon had taken a hand in the game. Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round— spinning like a top. The water, the banks, the forest, the now distant bridge, fort and men— all were commingled and blurred. Objects were represented by their colours only; circular horizontal streaks of colour- that was all he saw. He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with a velocity of advance and gyration which made him giddy and sick. In a few moments he was flung upon the gravel at the foot of the left bank of the stream — the southern bank — and behind a projecting point which concealed him from his enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one of his hands on the gravel, restored him, and he wept with delight. He dug his fingers into the sand, threw it over himself in handfuls and audibly blessed it. A whizz and rattle of grapeshot among the branches high above his head roused him from his dream. The baffled cannoneer had fired him a random farewell. He sprang to his feet, rushed up the sloping bank, and plunged into the forest. All that day he travelled, laying his course by the rounding sun. The forest seemed interminable; nowhere did be discover a break in it, not even a woodman's road. He had not known that he lived in so wild a region. There was something uncanny in the revelation. His seek was in pain, and, lifting his hand to it he found it was terribly swollen. He knew that it had a circle of black where the rope had bruised it. His eyes felt congeated , he could no longer close them. His tongue was swollen with thirst. He relieved its fever by thrusting it forward from between his teeth into the cool air. How softly the turf had carpeted the untravelled avenue ! He could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet ! DoubtlebS, despite his suffering, he fell asleep while walking, for now he sees another seene — perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium. He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have travelled the entire night. As he pushed open the gate and passes up the wide white walk, he sees a flutter of female garments : his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the verandah to meet him. At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace aud dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is ! He springs forward with extended arms. As he is about to clasp her, he feels a stunning blow upon tbe back of the neck ; a blinding white light blazes all about him, with a sound like the shock of a cannon — then all is darkness' and silence-! Peyton Farquhar was dead ; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek-bridge. — Ambrose Bieecb, in the Leader.