An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

The ticking of a watch, slowed and swollen until each stroke rings like a hammer on an anvil: that is the sound a condemned man hears on a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, a noose at his throat and the water of Owl Creek waiting below. Peyton Farquhar is a planter who meant to burn that bridge for the Confederacy, and Ambrose Bierce, who had fought at Shiloh, hands him the cruellest gift in American fiction when he lets the rope break.