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    An Arrest: Ambrose Bierce

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    Chong Beng Lim
    Orrin Brower, who murdered his brother-in-law, escapes from jail by knocking out the jailer. He gets lost in the woods at night but eventually emerges on an old road where he encounters the jailer, Burton Duff. Duff silently indicates that Brower should continue walking away from town. They journey back to the jail, where Brower surrenders, only to discover Duff's dead body on a table inside.

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    An Arrest: Ambrose Bierce

    Uploaded by

    Chong Beng Lim
    110 views2 pages
    Orrin Brower, who murdered his brother-in-law, escapes from jail by knocking out the jailer. He gets lost in the woods at night but eventually emerges on an old road where he encounters the jailer, Burton Duff. Duff silently indicates that Brower should continue walking away from town. They journey back to the jail, where Brower surrenders, only to discover Duff's dead body on a table inside.

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    An Arrest

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    Orrin Brower, who murdered his brother-in-law, escapes from jail by knocking out the jailer. He gets lost in the woods at night but eventually emerges on an old road where he encounters the jailer, Burton Duff. Duff silently indicates that Brower should continue walking away from town. They journey back to the jail, where Brower surrenders, only to discover Duff's dead body on a table inside.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    110 views2 pages

    An Arrest: Ambrose Bierce

    Uploaded by

    Chong Beng Lim
    Orrin Brower, who murdered his brother-in-law, escapes from jail by knocking out the jailer. He gets lost in the woods at night but eventually emerges on an old road where he encounters the jailer, Burton Duff. Duff silently indicates that Brower should continue walking away from town. They journey back to the jail, where Brower surrenders, only to discover Duff's dead body on a table inside.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    An Arrest

    by Ambrose Bierce

    Having murdered his brother-in-law, Orrin Brower of Kentucky was a fugitive


    from justice. From the county jail where he had been confined to await his trial
    he had escaped by knocking down his jailer with an iron bar, robbing him of
    his keys and, opening the outer door, walking out into the night. The jailer
    being unarmed, Brower got no weapon with which to defend his recovered
    liberty. As soon as he was out of the town he had the folly to enter a forest;
    this was many years ago, when that region was wilder than it is now.

    The night was pretty dark, with neither moon nor stars visible, and as Brower
    had never dwelt thereabout, and knew nothing of the lay of the land, he was,
    naturally, not long in losing himself. He could not have said if he were getting
    farther away from the town or going back to it--a most important matter to
    Orrin Brower. He knew that in either case a posse of citizens with a pack of
    bloodhounds would soon be on his track and his chance of escape was very
    slender; but he did not wish to assist in his own pursuit. Even an added hour
    of freedom was worth having.

    Suddenly he emerged from the forest into an old road, and there before him
    saw, indistinctly, the figure of a man, motionless in the gloom. It was too late
    to retreat: the fugitive felt that at the first movement back toward the wood he
    would be, as he afterward explained, "filled with buckshot." So the two stood
    there like trees, Brower nearly suffocated by the activity of his own heart; the
    other--the emotions of the other are not recorded.
    A moment later--it may have been an hour--the moon sailed into a patch of
    unclouded sky and the hunted man saw that visible embodiment of Law lift an
    arm and point significantly toward and beyond him. He understood. Turning
    his back to his captor, he walked submissively away in the direction indicated,
    looking to neither the right nor the left; hardly daring to breathe, his head and
    back actually aching with a prophecy of buckshot.

    Brower was as courageous a criminal as ever lived to be hanged; that was


    shown by the conditions of awful personal peril in which he had coolly killed
    his brother-in-law. It is needless to relate them here; they came out at his trial,
    and the revelation of his calmness in confronting them came near to saving
    his neck. But what would you have?--when a brave man is beaten, he
    submits.

    So they pursued their journey jailward along the old road through the woods.
    Only once did Brower venture a turn of the head: just once, when he was in
    deep shadow and he knew that the other was in moonlight, he looked
    backward. His captor was Burton Duff, the jailer, as white as death and
    bearing upon his brow the livid mark of the iron bar. Orrin Brower had no
    further curiosity.

    Eventually they entered the town, which was all alight, but deserted; only the
    women and children remained, and they were off the streets. Straight toward
    the jail the criminal held his way. Straight up to the main entrance he walked,
    laid his hand upon the knob of the heavy iron door, pushed it open without
    command, entered and found himself in the presence of a half-dozen armed
    men. Then he turned. Nobody else entered.

    On a table in the corridor lay the dead body of Burton Duff.

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