E X - L I B I S EMMA AND ALFRED E H KM AN University of California Berkeley From the collection of MRS. ALFRED EHRMAN COLLECTION OF BRITISH AUTHORS TAUCHNITZ EDITION, VOL. 2814. IN THE MIDST OF LIFE. BY AMBROSE BIERCE. IN ONE VOLUME. IN THE MIDST OF LIFE TALE S OF SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANS. BY AMBROSE BIERCE COPYRIGHT EDITION. LEIPZIG BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ 1892. CONTENTS. PAGU THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS 7 The Night . ; .;'.... 7 The Day before . . . , : . .-' ..... 10 The Day after 16 SOLDIERS. A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY 23 AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE .... 35 CHICKAMAUGA 53 A SON OF THE GODS 65 ONE OF THE MISSING 78 KILLED AT RESACA 100. THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH 112 A TOUGH TUSSLE 128 THE COUP DE GRACE 142 PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER 153 O CONTENTS. CIVILIANS. PAGE A WATCHER BY THE DEAD 167 THE MAN AND THE SNAKE 187 A HOLY TERROR 200 AN INHABITANT OF CARCOSA 226 THE BOARDED WINDOW 233 THE MIDDLE TOE OF THE RIGHT FOOT 242 HAITA THE SHEPHERD 258 AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE 268 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE. THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS. THE NIGHT. ONE midsummer night a farmer's boy living about ten miles from the city of Cincinnati, was following a bridle path through a dense and dark forest. He had been searching for some missing cows, and at nightfall found himself a long way from home, and in a part of the country with which he was only partly familiar. Bat he was a stout-hearted lad, and, knowing his general direction from his home, he plunged into the forest without hesitation, guided by the stars. Coming into the bridle path, and ob serving that it ran in the right direction, he fol lowed it. The night was clear, but in the woods it was ex ceedingly dark. It was more by the sense of touch 8 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE. than by that of sight that the lad kept the path. He could not, indeed, very easily go astray; the under growth on both sides was so thick as to be almost impenetrable. He had gone into the forest a mile or more when he was surprised to see a feeble gleam of light shining through the foliage skirting the path on his left. The sight of it startled him, and set his heart beating audibly. "The old Breede house is somewhere about here," he said to himself. "This must be the other end of the path which we reach it by from our side. Ugh! what should a light be doing there? I don't like it." Nevertheless, he pushed on. A moment later and he had emerged from the forest' into a small, open space, mostly upgrown to brambles. There were remnants of a rotting fence. A few yards from the trail, in the middle of the clearing, was the house, from which the light came through an un- glazed window. The window had once contained glass, but that and its supporting frame had long ago yielded to missiles flung by hands of venture some boys, to attest alike their courage and their hostility to the supernatural; for the Breede house bore the evil reputation of being haunted. Possibly it was not, but even the hardiest sceptic could not THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS. Q deny that it was deserted which, in rural regions, is much the same thing. Looking at the mysterious dim light shining from the ruined window, the boy remembered with appre hension that his own hand had assisted at the de struction. His penitence was, of course, poignant in proportion to its tardiness and inefficacy. He half expected to be set upon by all the unworldly and bodiless malevolences whom he had outraged by assisting to break alike their windows and their peace. Yet this stubborn lad, shaking in every limb, would not retreat. The blood in his veins was strong and rich with the iron of the frontiersman. He was but two removes from the generation which had subdued the Indian. He started to pass the house. As he was going by, he looked in at the blank window space, and saw a strange and terrifying sight the figure of a man seated in the centre of the room, at a table upon which lay some loose sheets of paper. The elbows rested on the table, the hands supporting the head, which was uncovered. On each side the fingers were pushed into the hair. The face showed pale in the light of a single candle a little to one side. The flame illuminated that side of the face, the other was in deep shadow. The IO IN THE MIDST OF LIFE. man's eyes were fixed upon the blank window space with a stare in which an older and cooler observer might have discerned something of apprehension, but which seemed to the lad altogether soulless. He believed the man to be dead. The situation was horrible, but not without its fascination. The boy paused in his flight to note it all. He endeavoured to still the beating of his heart by holding his breath until half suffocated. He was weak, faint, trembling; he could feel the deathly whiteness of his face. Nevertheless, he set his teeth and resolutely advanced to the house. He had no conscious intention it was the mere courage of terror. He thrust his white face forward into the illuminated opening. At that instant a* strange, harsh cry, a shriek, broke upon the silence of the night the note of a screech owl. The man sprang to his feet, overturning the table and extinguishing the candle. The boy took to his heels. THE DAY BEFORE. "Good-morning, Colston. I am in luck, it seems. You have often said that my commendation of your literary work was mere civility, and here you find me absorbed actually merged in your latest story in the Messenger, Nothing less shocking than your THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS. I I touch upon my shoulder would have roused me to consciousness." "The proof is stronger than you seem to know," replied the man addressed; "so keen is your eager ness to read my story that you are willing to re nounce selfish considerations and forego all the pleasure that you could get from it." "I don't understand you," said the other, folding the newspaper that he held, and putting it in his pocket. "You writers are a queer lot, anyhow. Come, tell me what I have done or omitted in this matter. In what way does the pleasure that I get, or might get, from your work depend on me?" "In many ways. Let me ask you how you would enjoy your dinner if you took it in this street car. Suppose the phonograph so perfected as to be able to give you an entire opera singing, orchestration, and all; do you think you would get much pleasure out of it if you turned it on at your office during business hours? Do you really care for a serenade by Schubert when you hear it fiddled by an untimely Italian on a morning ferry-boat? Are you always cocked and primed for admiration? Do you keep every mood on tap, ready to any demand? Let me remind you, sir, that the story which you have done me the honour to begin as a means of becoming 12 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE. oblivious to the discomfort of this street car is a ghost story!" "Well?" "Well! Has the reader no duties corresponding to his privileges? You have paid five cents for that newspaper. It is yours. You have the right to read it when and where you will. Much of what is in it is neither helped nor harmed by time, and place, and mood; some of it actually requires to be read at once while it is fizzing. But my story is not of that character. It is not the 'very latest advices' from Ghost Land. You are not expected to keep yourself au courant with what is going on in the realm of spooks. The stuff will keep until you have leisure to put yourself into the frame of mind appro priate to the sentiment of the piece which I re spectfully submit that you cannot do in a street car, even if you are the only passenger. The solitude is not of the right sort. An author has rights which the reader is bound to respect." "For specific example?" "The right to the reader's undivided attention. To deny him this is immoral. To make him share your attention with the rattle of a street car, the moving panorama of the crowds on the sidewalks, and the buildings beyond with any of the thousands THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS. 13 of distractions which make our customary environ ment is to treat him with gross injustice. By God, it is infamous!" The speaker had risen to his feet, and was steadying himself by one of the straps hanging from the roof of the car. The other man looked up at him in sudden astonishment, wondering how so trivial a grievance could seem to justify so strong language. He saw that his friend's face was uncom monly pale, and that his eyes glowed like living coals. "You know what I mean," continued the writer, impetuously, crowding his words "You know what I mean, Marsh. My stuff in this morning's Mes senger is plainly sub-headed 'A Ghost Story.' That is ample notice to all. Every honourable reader will understand it as prescribing by implication the con ditions under which the work is to be read." The man addressed as Marsh winced a trifle, then asked with a smile: "What conditions? You know that I am only a plain business man, who can not be supposed to understand such things. How, when, where should I read your ghost story?" "In solitude at night by the light of a candle. There are certain emotions which a writer can easily enough excite such as compassion or merriment. I 14 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE. can move you to tears or laughter under almost any circumstances. But for my ghost story to be effective you must be made to feel fear at least a strong sense of the supernatural and that is a different matter. I have a right to expect that if you read me at all you will give me a chance; that you will make yourself accessible to the emotion which I try to inspire." The car had now arrived at its terminus and stopped. The trip just completed was its first for the day, and the conversation of the two early passengers had not been interrupted. The streets were yet silent and desolate; the house tops were just touched by the rising sun. As they stepped from the car and walked away together Marsh narrowly eyed his companion, who was reported, like most men of uncommon literary ability, to be addicted to various destructive vices. That is the revenge which dull minds take upon bright ones in resent ment of their superiority. Mr. Colston was known as a man of genius. There are honest souls who believe that genius is a mode of excess. It was known that Colston did not drink liquor, but many said that he ate opium. Something in his appear ance that morning a certain wildness of the eyes, an unusual pallor, a thickness and rapidity of speech THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS. 15 were taken by Mr. Marsh to confirm the report. Nevertheless, he had not the self-denial to abandon a subject which he found interesting, however it might excite his friend. "Do you mean to say," he began, "that if I take the trouble to observe your directions place myself in the condition which you demand: solitude, night, and a tallow candle you can with your ghastliest work give me an uncomfortable sense of the super natural, as you call it? Can you accelerate my pulse, make me start at sudden noises, send a nervous chill along my spine, and cause my hair to rise?" Colston turned suddenly and looked him squarely in the eyes as they walked. "You would not dare you have not the courage," he said. He emphasised the words with a contemptuous gesture. "You are brave enough to read me in a street car, but in a deserted house alone in the forest at night! Bah! I have a manuscript in my pocket that would kill you." Marsh was angry. He knew himself a man of courage, and the words stung him. "If you know such a place," he said, "take me there to-night and leave me your story and a candle. Call for me when I've had time enough to read it, and I'll tell you the entire plot and kick you out of the place." I 6 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE. That is how it occurred that the farmer's boy, looking in at an unglazed window of the Breede house, saw a man sitting in the light of a candle. THE DAY AFTER. Late in the afternoon of the next day three men and a boy approached the Breede- house from that point of the compass toward which the boy had fled the preceding night. They were in high spirits apparently; they talked loudly and laughed. They made facetious and good-humoured ironical remarks to the boy about his adventure, which evidently they did not believe in. The boy accepted their raillery with seriousness, making no reply. 'He had a sense of the fitness of things, and knew that one who pro fesses to have seen a dead man rise from his seat and blow out a candle is not a credible witness. Arrived at the house, and finding the door bolted on the inside, the party of investigators entered with out further ceremony than breaking it down. Lead ing out of the passage into which this door had opened was another on the right and one on the left. These two doors also were fastened, and were broken in. They first entered at random the one on the left. It was vacant. In the room on the THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS. IJ right the one which had the blank front window was the dead body of a man. It lay partly on one side, with the forearm beneath it, the cheek on the floor. The eyes were wide open; the stare was not an agreeable thing to encounter. An overthrown table, a partly-burned candle, a chair, and some paper with writing on it, were all else that the room contained. The men looked at the body, touching the face in turn. The boy gravely stood at the head, assuming a look of ownership. It was the proudest moment of his life. One of the men said to him, "You're a good un," a remark which was received by the two others with nods of acquiescence. It was Scepticism apologising to Truth. Then one of the men took from the floor the sheets of manuscript and stepped to the window, for already the evening shadows were glooming the forest. The song of the whip-poor-will was heard in the distance, and a monstrous beetle sped by the window on roaring wings, and thundered away out of hearing. THE MANUSCRIPT. "Before committing the act which, rightly or wrongly, I have resolved on, and appearing before In the Midst of Life. 2 I 8 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE. my Maker for judgment, I, James R. Colston, deem it my duty as a journalist to make a statement to the public. My name is, I believe, tolerably well known to the people as a writer of tragic tales, but the soberest imagination never conceived anything so gloomy as my own life and history. Not in inci dent: my life has been destitute of adventure and action. But my mental career has been lurid with experiences such as kill and damn. I shall not recount them here some of them are written and ready for publication elsewhere. The object of these lines is to explain to whomsoever may be interested that my death is voluntary my own act. I shall die at twelve o'clock on the night of the i5th of July a significant anniversary to me', for it was on that day, and at that hour, that my friend in time and eternity, Charles Breede, performed his vow to me by the same act which his fidelity to our pledge now entails upon me. He took his life in his little house in the Copeton woods. There was the cus tomary verdict of 'temporary insanity.' Had I testified at that inquest, had I told all I knew, they would have called me mad! "I have still a week of life in which to arrange my worldly affairs, and prepare for the great change. It is enough, for I have but few affairs, and it is now THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS. I 9 four years since death became an imperative obliga tion. "I shall bear this writing on my body; the finder will please hand it to the coroner. "JAMES R. COLSTON. "P.S. Willard Marsh, on this the fatal fifteenth day of July, I hand you this manuscript, to be opened and read under the conditions agreed upon, and at the place which I designate. I forego my intention to keep it on my body to explain the manner of my death, which is not important. It will serve to explain the manner of yours. I am to call for you during the night to receive assurance that you have read the manuscript. You know me well enough to expect me. But, my friend, it will be after twelve o'clock. May God have mercy on our souls! "J. R. C." Before the man who was reading this manuscript had finished, the candle had been picked up and lighted. When the reader had done, he quietly thrust the paper against the flame, and despite the protestations of the others held it until it was burnt to ashes. The man who did this, and who placidly 2* 2O IN THE MIDST OF LIFE. endured a severe reprimand from the coroner, was a son-in-law of the late Charles Breede. At the in quest nothing could elicit an intelligible account of what the paper contained. From the " TIMES." "Yesterday the Commissioners of Lunacy com mitted to the asylum Mr. James R. Colston, a writer of some local reputation, connected with the Mes senger. It will be remembered that on the evening of the 1 5th inst. Mr. Colston was given into custody by one of his fellow-lodgers in the Baine House, who had observed him acting very suspiciously, baring his throat and whetting a razor occasionally trying its edge by actually cutting through the skin of his arm, etc. On being handed over to the police, the unfortunate man made a desperate resistance and has ever since been so violent that it has been necessary to keep him in a strait-jacket. Most of our esteemed contemporary's other writers are still at large." SOLDIERS. A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY. ONE sunny afternoon in the autumn of the year 1 86 1, a soldier lay in a clump of laurel by the side of a road in Western Virginia. He lay at full length, upon his stomach, his feet resting upon the toes, his head upon the left forearm. His extended right hand loosely grasped his rifle. But for the some what methodical disposition of his limbs and a slight rhythmic movement of the cartridge box at the back of his belt, he might have been thought to be dead. He was asleep at his post of duty. But if detected he would be dead shortly afterward, that being the just and legal penalty of his crime. The clump of laurel in which the criminal lay was in the angle of a road, which, after ascending, southward, a steep acclivity to that point, turned sharply to the west, running along the summit for perhaps one hundred yards. There it turned south ward again and went zigzagging downward through the forest. At the salient of that second angle was 24 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE. a large flat rock, jutting out from the ridge to the northward, overlooking the deep valley from which the road ascended. The rock capped a high cliff; a stone dropped from its outer edge would have fallen sheer downward one thousand feet to the tops of the pines. The angle where the soldier lay was on another spur of the same cliff. Had he been awake he would have commanded a view, not only of the short arm of the road and the jutting rock but of the entire profile of the cliff below it. It might well have made him giddy to look. The country was wooded everywhere except at the bottom of the valley to the northward, where there was a small natural meadow, through which flowed a stream scarcely visible frdm the valley's rim. This open ground looked hardly larger than an ordinary door-yard, but was really several acres in extent. Its green was more vivid than that of the inclosing forest. Away beyond it rose a line of giant cliffs similar to those upon which we are sup posed to stand in our survey of the savage scene, and through which the road had somehow made its climb to the summit. The configuration of the valley, indeed, was such that from our point of observation it seemed entirely shut in, and one could not but have wondered how the road which found a way out A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY. 25 of it had found a way into it, and whence came and whither went the waters of the stream that parted the meadow two thousand feet below. No country is so wild and difficult but men will make it a theatre of war; concealed in the forest at the bottom of that military rat trap, in which half a hundred men in possession of the exits might have starved an army to submission, lay five regiments of Federal infantry. They had marched all the previous day and night and were resting. At nightfall they would take to the road again, climb to the place where their unfaithful sentinel now slept, and, de scending the other slope of the ridge, fall upon a camp of the enemy at about midnight. Their hope was to surprise it, for the road led to the rear of it. In case of failure their position would be perilous in the extreme; and fail they surely would should ac cident or vigilance apprise the enemy of the move ment. The sleeping sentinel in the clump of laurel was a young Virginian named Carter Druse. He was the son of wealthy parents, an only child, and had known such ease and cultivation and high living as wealth and taste were able to command in the moun tain country of Western Virginia. His home was but a few miles from where he now lay. One morning 26 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE. he had risen from the breakfast table and said, quietly but gravely: "Father, a Union regiment has arrived at Grafton. I am going to join it." The father lifted his leonine head, looked at the son a moment in silence, and replied: "Go, Carter, and, whatever may occur, do what you conceive to be your duty. Virginia, to which you are a traitor, must get on without you. Should we both live to the end of the war, we will speak further of the matter. Your mother, as the physician has informed you, is in a most critical condition; at the best she cannot be with us longer than a few weeks, but that time is precious. It would be better not to disturb her." So Carter Druse, bowing reverenfly to his father, who returned the salute with a stately courtesy which masked a breaking heart, left the home of his child hood to go soldiering. By conscience and courage, by deeds of devotion and daring, he soon com mended himself to his fellows and his officers; and it was to these qualities and to some knowledge of the country that he owed his selection for his present perilous duty at the extreme outpost. Nevertheless, fatigue had been stronger than resolution, and he had fallen asleep. What good or bad angel came in a dream to rouse him from his state of crime who A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY. 2"J shall say? Without a movement, without a sound, in the profound silence and the languor of the late afternoon, some invisible messenger of fate touched with unsealing finger the eyes of his consciousness whispered into the ear of his spirit the mysterious awakening word which no human lips have ever spoken, no human memory ever has recalled. He quietly raised his forehead from his arm and looked between the masking stems of the laurels, instinct ively closing his right hand about the stock of his rifle. His first feeling was a keen artistic delight. On a colossal pedestal, the cliff, motionless at the extreme edge of the capping rock and sharply outlined against the sky, was an equestrian statue of impressive dig nity. The figure of the man sat the figure of the horse, straight and soldierly, but with the repose of a Grecian god carved in the marble which limits the suggestion of activity. The grey costume harmonised with its aerial background; the metal of accoutre ment and caparison was softened and subdued by the shadow; the animal's skin had no points of high light. A carbine, strikingly foreshortened, lay across the pommel of the saddle, kept in place by the right hand grasping it at the "grip"; the left hand, hold ing the bridle rein, was invisible. In silhouette against 28 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE. the sky, the profile of the horse was cut with the sharpness of a cameo; it looked across the heights of air to the confronting cliffs beyond. The face of the rider, turned slightly to the left, showed only an out line of temple and beard; he was looking downward to the bottom of the valley. Magnified by its lift against the sky and by the soldier's testifying sense of the formidableness of a near enemy, the group appeared of heroic, almost colossal, size. For an instant Druse had a strange, half-defined feeling that he had slept to the end of the war and was looking upon a noble work of art reared upon that commanding eminence to commemorate the deeds of an heroic past of which he had been an inglorious part. The feeling was dispelled by a slight movement of the group; the horse, without moving its feet, had drawn its body slightly backward from the verge; the man remained immobile as before. Broad awake and keenly alive to the significance of the situation, Druse now brought the butt of his rifle against his cheek by cautiously pushing the barrel forward through the bushes, cocked the piece, and, glancing through the sights, covered a vital spot of the horseman's breast. A touch upon the trigger and all would have been well with Carter Druse. At that instant the horseman turned his head and looked A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY. 2Q in the direction of his concealed foeman seemed to look into his very face, into his eyes, into his brave compassionate heart. Is it, then, so terrible to kill an enemy in war an enemy who has surprised a secret vital to the safety of one's self and comrades an enemy more formidable for his knowledge than all his army for its numbers? Carter Druse grew deathly pale; he shook in every limb, turned faint, and saw the statuesque group before him as black figures, rising, falling, moving unsteadily in arcs of circles in a fiery sky. His hand fell away from his weapon, his head slowly dropped until his face rested on the leaves in which he lay. This courageous gentleman and hardy soldier was near swooning from intensity of emotion. It was not for long; in another moment his face was raised from earth, his hands resumed their places on the rifle, his forefinger sought the trigger; mind, heart, and eyes were clear, conscience and reason sound. He could not hope to capture that enemy; to alarm him would but send him dashing to his camp with his fatal news. The duty of the soldier was plain: the man must be shot dead from ambush without warning, without a moment's spiritual pre paration, with never so much as an unspoken prayer, 30 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE. he must be sent to his account. But no there is a hope; he may have discovered nothing perhaps he is but admiring the sublimity of the landscape. If permitted he may turn and ride carelessly away in the direction whence he came. Surely it will be possible to judge at the instant of his withdrawing whether he knows. It may well be that his fixity of attention Druse turned his head and looked below, through the deeps of air downward, as from the sur face to the bottom of a translucent sea. He saw creeping across the green meadow a sinuous line of figures of men and horses some foolish commander was permitting the soldiers of his escort to water their beasts in the open, in plain view from a hun dred summits! Druse withdrew his eyes from the valley and fixed them again upon the group of man and horse in the sky, and again it was through the sights of his rifle. But this time his aim was at the horse. In his memory, as if they were a divine mandate, rang the words of his father at their parting. "What ever may occur, do what you conceive to be your duty." He was calm now. His teeth were firmly but not rigidly closed; his nerves were as tranquil as a sleeping babe's not a tremor affected any muscle of his body; his breathing, until suspended A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY. 31 in the act of taking aim, was regular and slow. Duty had conquered; the spirit had said to the body: "Peace, be still." He fired. At that moment an officer of the Federal force, who, in a spirit of adventure or in quest of know ledge, had left the hidden bivouac in the valley, and, with aimless feet, had made his way to the lower edge of a small open space near the foot of the cliff, was considering what he had to gain by pushing his exploration further. At a distance of a quarter-mile before him, but apparently at a stone's throw, rose from its fringe of pines the gigantic face of rock, towering to so great a height above him that it made him giddy to look up to where its edge cut a sharp, rugged line against the sky. At some distance away to his right it presented a clean, vertical profile against a background of blue sky to a point half of the way down, and of distant hills hardly less blue thence to the tops of the trees at its base. Lifting his eyes to the dizzy altitude of its summit, the officer saw an astonishing sight a man on horseback riding down into the valley through the air! Straight upright sat the rider, in military fashion, with a firm seat in the saddle, a strong clutch upon the rein to hold his charger from too impetuous a plunge. From his bare head his long hair streamed 32 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE. upward, waving like a plume. His right hand was concealed in the cloud of the horse's lifted mane. The animal's body was as level as if every hoof stroke encountered the resistant earth. Its motions were those of a wild gallop, but even as the officer looked they ceased, with all the legs thrown sharply forward as in the act of alighting from a leap. But this was a flight! Filled with amazement and terror by this appari tion of a horseman in the sky half believing himself the chosen scribe of some new Apocalypse, the officer was overcome by the intensity of his emotions; his legs failed him and he fell. Almost at the same instant he heard a crashing sound in the trees a sound that died without an echo, and all was still. The officer rose to his feet, trembling. The familiar sensation of an abraded shin recalled his dazed faculties. Pulling himself together, he ran rapidly obliquely away from the cliff to a point a half-mile from its foot; thereabout he expected to find his man; and thereabout he naturally failed. In the fleeting instant of his vision his imagination had been so wrought upon by the apparent grace and ease and intention of the marvellous performance that it did not occur to him that the line of march of aerial cavalry is directed downward, and that he A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY. 33 could find the objects of his search at the very foot of the cliff. A half hour later he returned to camp. This officer was a wise man; he knew better than to tell an incredible truth. He said nothing of what he had seen. But when the commander asked him if in his scout he had learned anything of advantage to the expedition, he answered: "Yes, sir; there is no road leading down into this valley from the southward." The commander, knowing better, smiled. After firing his shot private Carter Druse re loaded his rifle and resumed his watch. Ten minutes had hardly passed when a Federal sergeant crept cautiously to him on hands and knees. Druse neither turned his head nor looked at him, but lay without motion or sign of recognition. "Did you fire?" the sergeant whispered. "Yes." "At what?" "A horse. It was standing on yonder rock pretty far out. You see it is no longer there. It went over the cliff." The man's face was white but he showed no other sign of emotion. Having answered, he turned away his face and said no more. The sergeant did not understand. In the Midst of Life. 3 34 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE. "See here, Druse," he said, after a moment's silence, "it's no use making a mystery. I order you to report. Was there anybody on the horse?" "Yes." "Who?" "My father." The sergeant rose to his feet and walked away. "Good God!" he said. AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE. I. A MAN stood upon a railroad bridge in Northern Alabama, looking down into the swift waters twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope loosely en circled his neck. 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 sup plied a footing for him and his executioners two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant, who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood with his rifle in the position known as "support," that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the 3* 36 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE. forearm thrown straight across the chest a formal and unnatural position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the centre of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot plank which traversed it. Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost further along. The other bank of the stream was open ground a gentle acclivity crowned with a stockade of vertical tree trunks, loop-holed for rifles, with a single embrasure through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon commanding the bridge. Midway of the slope between bridge and fort were the spectators a single company of infantry in line, at "parade rest," the butts of the rifles on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. A lieutenant stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon the ground, his left hand resting upon his right. Excepting the group of four at the centre of the bridge not a man moved. The com pany faced the bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels, facing the banks of the stream, might AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE. 37 have been statues to adorn the bridge. The captain stood with folded arms, silent, observing the work of his subordinates but making no sign. Death is a dignitary who, when he comes announced, is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference. The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five years of age. He was a civilian, if one might judge from his dress, which was that of a planter. His features were good a straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long, dark hair was combed straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well-fitting frock 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 neck was in the hemp. Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision for hang ing 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 he had been standing. The sergeant 38 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE. turned to the captain, saluted and placed himself immediately behind that officer, who in turn moved apart one pace. These movements left the con demned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the same plank, which 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 go down between two ties. The arrangement com mended itself to his judgment as simple and effective. 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 water 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 ap peared to move! What a sluggish stream! He closed 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 dis tracted him. And now he became conscious of a AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE. 3Q 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 ringing quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He awaited each stroke with impatience and he knew not why apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer; the delays be came 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 4O IN THE MIDST OF LIFE. 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 which 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. AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE. 4! One evening while Farquhar and his wife were sitting on a rustic bench near the entrance to his grounds, a grey-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 gone to fetch 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, and built a stockade on the other bank. The commandant has issued an order, which is posted everywhere, declaring that any civilian caught inter fering with the railroad, its bridges, tunnels, or trains, will be summarily hanged. I saw the order." "How far is it to the Owl Creek bridge?" Far quhar asked. "About thirty miles." "Is there no force on this side the creek?" "Only a picket post half a mile out, on the rail road, and a single sentinel at this end of the bridge." "Suppose a man a civilian and student of hang ing should elude the picket post and perhaps get the better of the sentinel," said Farquhar, smiling, "what could he accomplish?" 42 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE. The soldier reflected. "I was there a month ago," he replied. "I observed that the flood of last winter had lodged a great quantity of driftwood against the wooden pier at this end of the bridge. It is now dry and would burn like tow." The lady had now brought the water, which the soldier drank. He thanked her ceremoniously, bowed to her husband, and rode away. An hour later, after nightfall, he repassed the plantation, going north ward in the direction from which he had come. He was a Federal scout. III. As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge, he lost consciousness and was as one al ready 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 suf focation. Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward through 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 in tolerable temperature. As to his head, he was con- AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE. 43 scious of nothing but a feeling of fulness of con gestion. These sensations were unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced; he had 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 sub stance, he swung through unthinkable arcs of oscilla tion, like a vast pendulum. Then all at once, with terrible suddenness, the light about him shot upward with the noise of a loud plash; a frightful roaring was in his ears, and all was cold and dark. The power of thought was restored; he knew that the rope 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. To die of hanging at the bottom of a river! the idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened his eyes in the blackness and saw above him a gleam of light, but how distant, how inaccessible! He was still sinking, for the light became fainter and fainter until it was a mere glimmer. Then it began to grow and brighten, and he knew that he was rising toward the surface knew it with reluctance, for he was now very com fortable. "To be hanged and drowned," he thought, 44 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE. "that is not so bad; but I do not wish to be shot. No; I will not be shot; that is not fair." He was not conscious of an effort, but a sharp pain in his wrists apprised him that he was trying to free his hands. He gave the struggle his attention, as an idler might observe the feat of a juggler, with out interest in the outcome. What splendid effort! what magnificent, what superhuman 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 a new interest as first one and then the other pounced upon the noose at his neck. They tore it away and thrust it fiercely aside, its undulations resembling those of a water-snake. "Put it back, put it back!" He thought he shouted these words to his hands, for the undoing of the noose had been succeeded by the direst pang which he had yet experienced. His neck ached horribly; his brain was on fire; his heart, which had been fluttering faintly, gave a great leap, trying to force itself out at his mouth. 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, down ward strokes, forcing him to the surface. He felt AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE. 45 his head emerge; his eyes were blinded by the sun light; 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, preternaturally keen and alert. Something in the awful disturbance of his organic system had so exalted and refined them that they made record of things never before per ceived. He felt the ripples upon his face and heard their separate sounds as they struck. He looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the in dividual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf saw the very insects upon them, the locusts, the brilliant-bodied flies, the grey spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig. He noted the pris matic colours in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon flies' wings, the strokes of the water spiders' legs, like oars which had lifted their boat all these made audible music. A fish slid along beneath his eyes and he heard the rush of its body parting the water. He had come to the surface facing down the 46 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE. 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 exe cutioners. They were in silhouette against the blue sky. They shouted and gesticulated, pointing at him; the captain had drawn his pistol, but did not fire; the others were unarmed. Their movements were grotesque and horrible, their forms gigantic. Suddenly he heard a sharp report and something struck the water smartly 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 m the water saw the eye of the man on the bridge gazing 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 marks men had them. Nevertheless, this one had missed. A counter swirl had caught 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 singsong now rang out behind him and came across the water with a dis tinctness that pierced and subdued all other sounds, AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE. 47 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 coldly and piti lessly 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. . . . Ready. . . . Aim. . . . Fire." Farquhar dived dived as deeply as he could. The water roared in his ears like the voice of Niagara, yet he heard the dulled thunder of the volley, and rising again toward the surface, met shining bits of metal, singularly flattened, oscillating slowly down ward. Some of them touched him on the face and hands, then fell away, continuing their descent. One lodged between his collar and neck; it was uncom fortably warm, and he snatched it out. As he rose to the surface, gasping for breath, he saw that he had been a long time under water; he was perceptibly farther down stream nearer to safety. The soldiers had almost finished reloading; the metal ramrods flashed all at once in the sun shine as they were drawn from the barrels, turned 48 IN THE MIDST OF LIFE. 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 is 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 plash within two yards of him, followed by a loud rushing sound, diminuendo, which seemed to travel back through the air to the fort and died in an explosion which stirred the very river to its deeps! A rising sheet of water, which curved over him, fell down upon him, blinded him, strangled him! The cannon had taken a hand in the game. As he shook his head free from the commotion of the smitten water, he heard the deflected shot humming through the air ahead, and in an instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond. "They will not do that again," he thought; "the next time they will use a charge of grape. I must keep my eye upon the gun; the smoke will apprise AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE. 49 me the report arrives too late; it lags behind the missile. It is a good gun." 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 re presented 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 ringers into the sand, threw it over himself in handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked like gold, like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon the bank were giant garden plants; he noted a definite order in their arrangement, inhaled the fragrance of their blooms. A strange, roseate light shone through the spaces among their trunks, and the wind made in their branches the music of aeolian harps. He had In the Midst of Life, 4 5