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.

IV

After firing his shot, Private Carter Druse reloaded 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 eyes and said no more.  The sergeant did not understand.

“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.”

“Well?”

“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 water twenty feet below.  The man’s hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord.  A rope closely encircled 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 supplied 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 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 planking that traversed it.