[ { "chunk": 66, "story": 5, "summary": "The narrator introduces the best officer on the general's staff, a tall, handsome, courteous and fearless newcomer from another regiment, conspicuous in full uniform in action.", "predicament": "A gifted newcomer joins a close-knit group whose members know nothing of him, and quickly stands out among them." }, { "chunk": 67, "story": 5, "summary": "The staff grow fond of him but are dismayed that he is vain of his courage: in every battle he refuses to take cover, standing exposed where braver, older men sensibly hide.", "predicament": "Someone admired by everyone refuses ever to take cover, and the people who like them watch fearing the worst." }, { "chunk": 68, "story": 5, "summary": "Sent with orders across fire-swept ground, he walks upright instead of running, holding every eye; a fellow officer offers to bet he will be killed before he reaches the ditch.", "predicament": "Someone walks upright through danger where everyone else runs, while their own comrades lay bets on how soon they will fall." }, { "chunk": 69, "story": 5, "summary": "He never boasts and turns remonstrance aside with a joke; when the captain who warned him is killed, he tends the body in the middle of a fire-swept road, and his comrades wish he were not a fool.", "predicament": "Friends try to talk someone out of needless risks, and are laughed off with a joke they have no answer to." }, { "chunk": 70, "story": 5, "summary": "Sent with a message the long, safe way round, he instead canters into the open field under the enemy's guns; the general shouts to stop him, and the private who tries is killed at once.", "predicament": "Someone given a safe way to carry out an order takes the deadly way instead, and another dies trying to stop them." }, { "chunk": 71, "story": 5, "summary": "He rides calmly along the enemy's front; both lines break into a furious battle around him, and he ends up standing alone in the shot-swept space, his horse dead.", "predicament": "One person's needless display of courage sets off a fight in which many others die, and now leaves them stranded alone." }, { "chunk": 72, "story": 5, "summary": "Blocked by a gully he could have sheltered in, he will neither advance nor retreat and stands waiting to be killed; both sides stop firing, the enemy honours his body, and a year later the narrator finds a woman's love letter in his pocketbook.", "predicament": "Someone who could save themselves by taking cover will not be seen to shelter, and stands still until they are killed." }, { "chunk": 73, "story": 5, "summary": "The letter reveals that a rival had told the woman her lover was seen cowering behind a tree, and that she could bear his death but not his cowardice; the narrator visits her to return it, and she is charming and careless.", "predicament": "Someone learns that a person they love would rather see them dead than hear them called a coward." }, { "chunk": 74, "story": 5, "summary": "Seeing the bloodstain, she throws the letter into the fire, saying she cannot bear blood, and asks how he died; the narrator, seeing her beauty and her heartlessness, answers that he was bitten by a snake.", "predicament": "Someone faces the person whose careless words drove a friend to his death, and must decide whether to tell them." } ]