Read the excerpt from part 1 of "an occurrence at owl creek bridge."
he unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. “if i could free my hands,” he thought, “i might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. by diving i could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home. my home, god, is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond the invader’s farthest advance.”
as these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed man’s brain rather than evolved from it the captain nodded to the sergeant. the sergeant stepped aside.
based on the excerpt, which is the most reasonable plot prediction?
the prisoner will escape.
the prisoner will beg for mercy.
the execution will commence.
the sergeant will stop the hanging.

Match the definition to the word for a better understanding of the paragraph. 1 money does not buy happiness or security. 2john ringling, one of the five brothers of the ringling brothers circus, started out in 1884 with a trained horse and a performing bear. 3for over forty years, he worked hard at the family enterprise, bought up smaller circuses, and imported new acts. 4in the 1920s, he was rated as one of the world's wealthiest men and owned every sizable circus in the country. 5over 5,000 people were on his payroll, and over 240 railroad cars were in his retinue each time the circus moved. 6at the time of his death, however, he was a nervous, unhappy man; he was also bankrupt and beset by lawsuits. 7his carefully built circus empire passed into alien hands. 8all those years of work had turned to dust. 1. business organization alien 2. group beset 3. without funds to pay debts retinue 4. troubled or harassed enterprise 5. strange; belonging to another person, place, country, or thing bankrupt