This story is reprinted from The Great Modern American Stories 1920. A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man's hand's were behind his back, and 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 ri