In a flashback, the man’s name is revealed to be Peyton Farquhar, a farmer and slave owner whose plantation lay close to Owl Creek Bridge. As he does so, the sergeant steps off of the plank. As his doom draws near, the man begins to experience a heightened awareness of reality: first spotting a small piece of driftwood moving down the stream, then mistaking the ticking of his watch for a loud, drawn-out tolling “like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil.” He closes his eyes and fixes his thoughts on his family, then opens them and muses desperately on some means of getting free and getting back to them. When the sergeant steps away, the man will fall towards the creek and the rope will break his neck. The soldiers continue their preparations, leaving the man standing on one end of a board stuck out over the bridge, and a Union sergeant standing on the other end. The man himself is about thirty-five, and bears the clothes and bearing of a gentleman rather than a military figure. He is surrounded by Union soldiers, both on the bridge itself and on the nearby bank, who are preparing to execute him. In northern Alabama sometime during the Civil War, a man stands on Owl Creek Bridge with his hands tied behind his back and a rope around his neck.
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