In this one, the supernatural twist is less convincing than usual, but the main narrative is more so.
It is 1862, and we are in a Union army depot, far out in the wilds of Missouri, where corruption thrives with nobody watching. The colonel (Crahan Denton) has got into bad habits, drinking too much and failing to catch Confederate spies, as ordered. They may even be getting a visit from the General, to find out why...
Meanwhile a young Confederate recruit, lost and starving, desperately grabs a rabbit being cooked over the bonfire, but is caught and hauled up in front of the colonel, who sees a chance to raise a false charge of espionage, to improve his record. After jotting down the details of some items expected in tomorrow's delivery, he scrunches up the paper, and orders the soldier to put it in his pocket. Then he summons the sergeant, and orders him to search the soldier. Out comes the 'incriminating' document, and he sends for the captain to prepare for an execution at dawn.
The captain is suspicious of the document, thinking it unlikely that a recruit would carry a pen and paper with him in the field, and confides this to the sergeant, who apparently believes that execution might cause less suffering than the man could expect in combat or in a prison-camp. So the execution is ordered to go ahead.
Through the night, the colonel has been kept awake by the non-stop howling of the prisoner's faithful dog, and goes out and shoots it. But what goes round comes round, in a way that we can't reveal here...
The colonel is played with great confidence as the corrupt, cynical officer, whose ethical standards have long since withered away. The young soldier looks a little too comfortable to carry conviction as the desperate, hungry, barefoot Confederate of Lost Cause legend. And when the captain angrily tells the colonel that he's putting in for a transfer, he would be having to make his application to the colonel himself, who might retaliate by sending him on any number of miserable postings.
Still, not many of the supernatural sub-plots in this series really convince the sceptical, so the largely credible main plot makes quite a satisfying use of your 25 minutes.