Fourteen corpora split and classified: aesop, bierce, chekhov, holmes, keefe, lawson, lorimer, maupassant, nobody, plaintales, poe, torchy, wallingford and winesburg, each with its splitter and the hand-written groups and pages; catalogue v2 and v3; and the shared splitters gutenberg_chunks.py, se_split.py and se_build.py. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_019rwKTmug58sEsJ72AuWsEi
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<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1"><title>Bierce Reference Groups</title>
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<h1>Tales of Soldiers and Civilians: reference groups</h1>
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<p class="meta">Ambrose Bierce, 1891 (Project Gutenberg #13334). 26 stories, 299 scenes cut by the same rule as <code>chunk.py</code>.
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Summaries, predicaments, groups and options written by Claude by reading every scene: no local inference.
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A comparison baseline, not a pack. Option moves give a direction only, never a number.</p>
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<section><h2>G01 · On watch, and your guard slips</h2>
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<p class="pred">You were trusted to keep watch through the night, your guard has slipped, and something may already be coming.</p>
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<p class="meta">A person on watch wants to keep everyone safe and the lapse unseen from whatever is out in the dark. · 6 scenes from 4 stories
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(A Horseman in the Sky, The Mocking-Bird, The Boarded Window, The Eyes of the Panther) · stage <b>low</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Own up at once and raise the alarm. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>standing -</code> <code>relationships.comrades +</code></li><li>Say nothing and hope nobody noticed. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>flags.slept_on_watch set</code> <code>standing risk</code></li><li>Challenge whatever is out there, loudly. <span class='src'>from scene 160</span><br><code>nerve +</code> <code>relationships.comrades risk</code></li><li>Force yourself awake and keep your eyes on the dark. <span class='src'>from scene 3</span><br><code>nerve +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>0</b> · <i>A Horseman in the Sky</i> — Someone trusted to keep watch has fallen asleep at the post, where being found out would cost them their life.</summary><p class="sum">A Union soldier lies asleep at his post in a clump of laurel on a cliff-top above a valley, a crime for which the lawful penalty is death.</p></details><details><summary><b>1</b> · <i>A Horseman in the Sky</i> — A whole company's plan depends on staying unseen, and one careless lookout could give every one of them away.</summary><p class="sum">Five regiments lie hidden in the valley below, meaning to climb past the sleeping sentinel at nightfall and surprise the enemy camp; if they are seen, they are trapped.</p></details><details><summary><b>3</b> · <i>A Horseman in the Sky</i> — Someone who left home to prove their worth wakes suddenly at a dangerous post, having failed the trust placed in them.</summary><p class="sum">He left home, proved himself brave and was picked for this dangerous outpost, but fatigue beat him; now something wakes him and he grips his rifle.</p></details><details><summary><b>160</b> · <i>The Mocking-Bird</i> — Someone on watch loses all sense of direction in the dark, just as a figure comes toward them and will not answer.</summary><p class="sum">In the darkness he walked round his tree and lost his bearings, not knowing where the enemy or his own camp lay; then he heard a figure approaching and challenged it.</p></details><details><summary><b>271</b> · <i>The Boarded Window</i> — Someone keeping watch alone over a loved one's body is too exhausted by grief to stay awake.</summary><p class="sum">Stupefied by grief, he finishes laying her out and sits by the body with his head on the table; a wailing cry like a lost child sounds from the woods, and he falls asleep.</p></details><details><summary><b>289</b> · <i>The Eyes of the Panther</i> — Someone left alone at night waiting for a partner who has not come home falls asleep and wakes from a nightmare.</summary><p class="sum">He does not return by nightfall; she bars the door, puts a candle in the open window for him and falls asleep, dreaming of a second child with the face of a wild animal, and wakes trembling.</p></details></section><section><h2>G02 · Duty demands you harm someone you love</h2>
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<p class="pred">Your duty requires you to do something that will destroy someone you love, and nobody else can do it for you.</p>
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<p class="meta">A person under a duty wants to do right by both from someone they love on the wrong side of it. · 9 scenes from 3 stories
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(A Horseman in the Sky, The Affair at Coulter's Notch, The Story of a Conscience) · stage <b>middle</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Do your duty, and tell nobody what it cost you. <span class='src'>from scene 9</span><br><code>standing +</code> <code>relationships.loved_one -</code> <code>flags.duty_over_love set</code></li><li>Ask whether it is truly required. <span class='src'>from scene 78</span><br><code>relationships.authority -</code> <code>standing -</code></li><li>Give them a chance to get clear before you act. <span class='src'>from scene 6</span><br><code>relationships.loved_one +</code> <code>standing risk</code></li><li>Refuse, and take the punishment yourself. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>standing -</code> <code>relationships.loved_one +</code> <code>relationships.authority -</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>5</b> · <i>A Horseman in the Sky</i> — Someone who must kill a stranger to protect their comrades is overcome by horror at the very moment of doing it.</summary><p class="sum">He aims at the horseman's breast, but the rider turns and seems to look into his eyes; the young soldier shakes, turns faint and drops his face to the leaves.</p></details><details><summary><b>6</b> · <i>A Horseman in the Sky</i> — Someone hoping they will not have to kill sees proof that the other already knows the secret that endangers everyone.</summary><p class="sum">Recovering, he tells himself the rider may have seen nothing and may ride away, then sees an escort watering horses in plain view in the meadow below; the secret is out.</p></details><details><summary><b>7</b> · <i>A Horseman in the Sky</i> — Someone forced to choose between duty and the life of a person they love remembers a parent's words, and fires.</summary><p class="sum">Recalling his father's parting words about duty, he aims at the horse instead and fires calmly; below, an officer looks up and sees a horseman riding down through the air.</p></details><details><summary><b>9</b> · <i>A Horseman in the Sky</i> — Someone who has killed their own parent in the line of duty is ordered to report it, and answers without emotion.</summary><p class="sum">The officer, knowing better than to tell an incredible truth, says nothing of it; the sentinel tells a sergeant he shot a horse off the rock, and that the rider was his father.</p></details><details><summary><b>77</b> · <i>The Affair at Coulter's Notch</i> — Someone ordered to open fire on a target realises, with a sinking heart, exactly where that target is.</summary><p class="sum">The young captain rides up and is told to bring up a gun and engage the twelve; after a silence, he asks with effort whether the enemy guns are near the house.</p></details><details><summary><b>78</b> · <i>The Affair at Coulter's Notch</i> — Someone ordered to do something that will destroy what they love asks whether it is truly required, and is met with silence.</summary><p class="sum">Pale and hoarse, he asks whether the order is imperative; the general rides off without a sign, the mortified colonel nearly arrests him, and then the captain brings up a gun and opens fire.</p></details><details><summary><b>121</b> · <i>The Story of a Conscience</i> — Someone responsible for the safety of many has made a harsh rule, and now recognises the person who has broken it.</summary><p class="sum">The captain holds an isolated, dangerous command and issues passes to loyal locals, with an order that anyone abusing one will be shot; he has recognised the civilian as someone he knows.</p></details><details><summary><b>126</b> · <i>The Story of a Conscience</i> — Someone bound by a rule they made must condemn the person who once saved their life, and cannot bring themselves to break it.</summary><p class="sum">The bugle sounds; the captain confesses that shame kept him from telling the story that might have won the prisoner a pardon, then orders him shot, unbound and unguarded.</p></details><details><summary><b>127</b> · <i>The Story of a Conscience</i> — Someone who has done their duty against a person they owed everything cannot live with it, and pays with their own life.</summary><p class="sum">The spy is shot by the firing squad; at the same moment the captain shoots himself, leaving instructions to be buried like the spy, without honours.</p></details></section><section><h2>G03 · Told to obey without question</h2>
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<p class="pred">You have been told flatly to obey and not to ask why, and you believe the order will get the wrong people hurt.</p>
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<p class="meta">A subordinate wants to do right without defying orders from the one giving orders. · 8 scenes from 3 stories
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(The Affair at Coulter's Notch, One Kind of Officer, George Thurston) · stage <b>middle</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Obey to the letter, and make sure someone witnessed the order. <span class='src'>from scene 128</span><br><code>relationships.authority -</code> <code>flags.order_witnessed set</code> <code>standing risk</code></li><li>Obey, and answer anyone who objects with the words used on you. <span class='src'>from scene 138</span><br><code>relationships.subordinates -</code> <code>standing risk</code></li><li>Ask plainly whether it is really meant. <span class='src'>from scene 78 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>relationships.authority -</code> <code>nerve +</code></li><li>Refuse, and accept what follows. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>standing -</code> <code>relationships.authority -</code> <code>nerve +</code></li><li>Hold your tongue and do as you are told. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>relationships.authority +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>76</b> · <i>The Affair at Coulter's Notch</i> — Someone sees a superior sending a subordinate into hopeless danger out of spite, and their position forbids them to object.</summary><p class="sum">Among dead horses and men in the notch, the colonel points out there is room for one gun against twelve; the general ironically says the captain is a battery in himself, and the angry colonel cannot retort.</p></details><details><summary><b>79</b> · <i>The Affair at Coulter's Notch</i> — Someone who hesitated before an order now carries it out with terrible thoroughness while the onlookers remember only their hesitation.</summary><p class="sum">A hopeless duel of one gun against twelve begins; the gunners concentrate on the gun in front of the house, shells break into its roof, and the colonel remarks on the captain's reluctance to obey.</p></details><details><summary><b>128</b> · <i>One Kind of Officer</i> — Someone who asked a question is told curtly by a superior that their only job is to obey, and makes sure of a witness.</summary><p class="sum">A general tells a battery captain he is not permitted to know anything and must simply open fire on any movement in his front; the captain has his lieutenant witness the order, and salutes with pointed formality as the general rides off into the fog.</p></details><details><summary><b>134</b> · <i>One Kind of Officer</i> — Someone ordered to fire on any movement hears of one they suspect is friendly, and obeys the order to the letter.</summary><p class="sum">He asks who heard the approach, pales slightly, and orders all guns to open fire with grape; meanwhile the general who gave the order tells the division commander the battery is badly commanded.</p></details><details><summary><b>138</b> · <i>One Kind of Officer</i> — Someone who fears their orders are wrong is told by a subordinate that they must stop, and answers with the words used on them.</summary><p class="sum">The lieutenant urgently protests that they must stop firing; the captain coldly repeats the general's words to him, then shoots dead a man who mounts the parapet waving a flag, and the rest flee.</p></details><details><summary><b>139</b> · <i>One Kind of Officer</i> — Someone who knowingly obeyed an order that killed their own side is called to account, and says only that they obeyed.</summary><p class="sum">The division commander rides in, looks over the parapet and furiously tells the captain he has been fighting their own men; the captain says he knew it, and that the reason was withheld in his orders.</p></details><details><summary><b>152</b> · <i>George Thurston</i> — A rude remark to a newcomer is taken so literally that they disarm themselves to go into danger, and the speaker cannot apologise.</summary><p class="sum">The new aide asks to come along on a hazardous survey; the narrator gruffly asks in what capacity, and the aide says as a spectator, handing his sword and pistols to his servant. The narrator regrets his rudeness.</p></details><details><summary><b>153</b> · <i>George Thurston</i> — Someone disarmed by another's careless words stands in the open facing death with folded arms, too proud to retreat.</summary><p class="sum">Under fire, the aide sits in the open road with folded arms; his horse is killed, and he stands unarmed before a charging trooper until a lucky bullet drops his attacker. The narrator later apologises.</p></details></section><section><h2>G04 · A private score settled through official power</h2>
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<p class="pred">Someone with power over you is using it to settle a private score, and it may cost lives besides yours.</p>
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<p class="meta">A person caught in a grudge wants to survive it and stop the harm from someone in authority with a grudge. · 6 scenes from 3 stories
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(The Affair at Coulter's Notch, The Coup de Grâce, One Kind of Officer) · stage <b>middle</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Answer the insult to their face, and go anyway. <span class='src'>from scene 91</span><br><code>nerve +</code> <code>relationships.rival -</code> <code>standing risk</code></li><li>Say nothing now, and wait for your chance. <span class='src'>from scene 141</span><br><code>wits +</code> <code>relationships.rival -</code> <code>flags.revenge set</code></li><li>Stop it on your own authority. <span class='src'>from scene 81</span><br><code>nerve +</code> <code>relationships.authority -</code> <code>standing risk</code></li><li>Keep the gossip quiet and let the matter lie. <span class='src'>from scene 80</span><br><code>relationships.authority +</code> <code>standing +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>75</b> · <i>The Affair at Coulter's Notch</i> — A superior teases someone about the courage they boasted of in a subordinate, then turns the tease into a deadly order.</summary><p class="sum">A general, half-mocking, asks a colonel whether his much-praised young artillery captain would like to put a gun in a narrow notch facing twelve enemy guns; the colonel defends his man, and the general says it is the only place.</p></details><details><summary><b>80</b> · <i>The Affair at Coulter's Notch</i> — Someone begins to suspect that a subordinate's deadly order was never about the enemy at all, but a private grudge.</summary><p class="sum">The colonel asks that the captain's hesitation be kept quiet; he refuses the infantry permission to silence the guns, as the general forbade it, and an adjutant begins to hint that the captain is a Southerner.</p></details><details><summary><b>81</b> · <i>The Affair at Coulter's Notch</i> — Someone learns an order was a superior's revenge on a subordinate's family, and resolves to stop it on their own authority.</summary><p class="sum">The adjutant reveals that the general once camped near the captain's home, there was trouble over the captain's wife and a complaint, and the general was transferred; the indignant colonel goes to withdraw the gun himself.</p></details><details><summary><b>91</b> · <i>The Coup de Grâce</i> — An enemy with authority over someone sends them into mortal danger with an insult, and the person they love pays for it.</summary><p class="sum">That morning the major ordered the captain's company to a deadly position, insultingly suggesting he hand over command; the captain retorted that the major would be better dead, and in the action the sergeant fell.</p></details><details><summary><b>95</b> · <i>The Coup de Grâce</i> — Someone ends a friend's suffering by the only means left, and is caught in the act by the one person who hates them most.</summary><p class="sum">He draws his sword and drives it through his friend's heart; the dying man grips the blade, and at that moment the friend's brother steps out of the trees with two stretcher-bearers.</p></details><details><summary><b>141</b> · <i>One Kind of Officer</i> — Someone's last witness, whom they once snubbed, takes their revenge by saying nothing that would clear them.</summary><p class="sum">The resentful lieutenant says only that he warned the captain and was insulted, and denies knowing of any orders; the captain hears his doom and hands over his sword.</p></details></section><section><h2>G05 · A stranger who is not what they seem</h2>
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<p class="pred">A stranger everyone else accepts seems not quite right to you, and you cannot yet say why.</p>
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<p class="meta">A watchful person wants to know who they really are from a charming stranger. · 5 scenes from 3 stories
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(An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, The Story of a Conscience, A Lady from Redhorse) · stage <b>high</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Go after them and demand the truth. <span class='src'>from scene 120 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>nerve +</code> <code>relationships.stranger -</code></li><li>Ask around quietly. <span class='src'>from scene 275</span><br><code>wits +</code></li><li>Keep them at arm's length. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>relationships.stranger -</code></li><li>Let yourself be charmed. <span class='src'>from scene 276 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>relationships.stranger +</code> <code>flags.charmed set</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>16</b> · <i>An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge</i> — A friendly stranger hands someone eager to prove themselves an easy chance at glory, and it is really a trap.</summary><p class="sum">The rider tells him the bridge is lightly guarded and that dry driftwood lodged against it would burn; the planter is tempted, and the rider turns out to be an enemy scout.</p></details><details><summary><b>119</b> · <i>The Story of a Conscience</i> — A stranger who seems to belong is stopped at a checkpoint, while the one in charge watches and wonders where they have met.</summary><p class="sum">A shabby but striking civilian, coming from the direction of the camp, is halted by a sentinel for his pass while the captain commanding the post looks on.</p></details><details><summary><b>122</b> · <i>The Story of a Conscience</i> — Someone caught out by the one person who can see through their disguise faces a pistol without showing any fear.</summary><p class="sum">The civilian calmly turns and faces the captain's cocked pistol, offering his pass; the captain says it is forged and names him.</p></details><details><summary><b>274</b> · <i>A Lady from Redhorse</i> — Someone new to high society finds themselves falling for a charming stranger they know almost nothing about.</summary><p class="sum">A young heiress writes to her married friend that she is fascinated by a handsome, brilliant, much-travelled man at her seaside resort.</p></details><details><summary><b>275</b> · <i>A Lady from Redhorse</i> — Someone told that the stranger who fascinates them has a dark mystery finds it only makes them more fascinating.</summary><p class="sum">She defends him against her friend's teasing; a gossiping old acquaintance hints he has mysterious connections and is thought a magician, which thrills her and explains his power over her.</p></details></section><section><h2>G06 · Your heart is on the other side</h2>
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<p class="pred">You serve one side while your family, your feelings or your oldest ties belong to the other.</p>
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<p class="meta">A person of divided loyalty wants to be trusted without disowning their own from those who doubt them. · 4 scenes from 3 stories
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(A Horseman in the Sky, An Affair of Outposts, The Mocking-Bird) · stage <b>low</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Tell your family plainly where you stand. <span class='src'>from scene 2</span><br><code>relationships.family -</code> <code>standing +</code></li><li>Serve by your head, not your heart, and say so. <span class='src'>from scene 105</span><br><code>standing risk</code> <code>relationships.authority +</code></li><li>Keep quiet about where your ties lie. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>flags.hidden_ties set</code></li><li>Keep in touch with the other side in secret. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>relationships.family +</code> <code>standing risk</code> <code>flags.divided_loyalty set</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>2</b> · <i>A Horseman in the Sky</i> — A son tells his father he is going over to the other side, and is told coldly to do his duty.</summary><p class="sum">The sentinel, only son of a wealthy Virginian family, had told his father he was joining the Union; the father called him a traitor, told him to do his duty, and asked him not to disturb his dying mother.</p></details><details><summary><b>105</b> · <i>An Affair of Outposts</i> — Someone asks to serve a cause their heart is not in, and the one who decides doubts they can be trusted.</summary><p class="sum">A man of Southern sympathies asks the Governor for a commission in the Union army, saying he acts on what he thinks is right, not on what he feels; the Governor, preferring a man with his heart in it, is inclined to refuse.</p></details><details><summary><b>164</b> · <i>The Mocking-Bird</i> — Someone far from home dreams of a lost childhood and the person closest to them, before they were separated.</summary><p class="sum">He dreams of a happy childhood by a great river with his beloved twin brother, their widowed mother and a mocking-bird whose song filled everything.</p></details><details><summary><b>165</b> · <i>The Mocking-Bird</i> — Someone remembers how they lost touch with the person closest to them when their family was split between enemies.</summary><p class="sum">In the dream their mother dies, the brothers are parted to feuding relatives on opposite sides of the river, the bird goes with the brother, and their letters stop; he wakes at sunset.</p></details></section><section><h2>G07 · The only way to know is to go and look</h2>
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<p class="pred">Nobody knows what waits ahead, and the only way to find out is for someone to walk into it alone.</p>
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<p class="meta">A volunteer wants to learn the truth and bring it back from whatever lies ahead. · 11 scenes from 3 stories
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(A Son of the Gods, One of the Missing, The Mocking-Bird) · stage <b>low</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Go yourself, alone. <span class='src'>from scene 38</span><br><code>nerve +</code> <code>standing +</code> <code>flags.volunteered set</code></li><li>Creep in slowly and read the signs. <span class='src'>from scene 48</span><br><code>wits +</code></li><li>Push on further to be certain. <span class='src'>from scene 49</span><br><code>wits +</code> <code>standing risk</code></li><li>Send someone else in. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>relationships.comrades -</code> <code>standing -</code></li><li>Hurry back with what you know. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>relationships.comrades +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>35</b> · <i>A Son of the Gods</i> — A large group must cross open ground toward a place where an enemy may be waiting, and nobody knows whether they are.</summary><p class="sum">An advancing army halts at the edge of a wood before open country and a stone wall on a distant crest; after days of fighting the enemy has vanished, and nobody knows whether they wait behind the wall.</p></details><details><summary><b>38</b> · <i>A Son of the Gods</i> — Someone the crowd mocked a moment ago volunteers to walk alone toward almost certain death so that the others need not.</summary><p class="sum">The young officer asks the commander something the older man is reluctant to grant, then rides alone at a walk straight toward the wall; the skirmishers are halted, and the watching army is stirred to adoration and shame for having laughed.</p></details><details><summary><b>40</b> · <i>A Son of the Gods</i> — The only way to learn whether danger waits ahead is to send someone into it, and one person offers to pay the whole price.</summary><p class="sum">The narrator explains that skirmishers sent to find out whether the enemy holds the ridge would be slaughtered; the young officer is paying the price alone.</p></details><details><summary><b>41</b> · <i>A Son of the Gods</i> — Someone on a lonely errand could save themselves by giving up, but that would make the whole sacrifice worthless.</summary><p class="sum">He could surrender and live, but that would answer nothing; for his errand to succeed he must either return unharmed or be shot dead before his comrades' eyes.</p></details><details><summary><b>42</b> · <i>A Son of the Gods</i> — Someone who has found out the truth cannot bring word back, so they try to force the enemy to reveal it themselves.</summary><p class="sum">Having seen the enemy line, he gallops back and forth along the crest trying to force the hidden troops to reveal themselves by firing on him, while they hold their fire.</p></details><details><summary><b>46</b> · <i>One of the Missing</i> — Someone trusted for their nerve is sent alone into hostile ground to find out what the enemy is doing.</summary><p class="sum">A fearless private detailed as a scout slips out past the earthworks, sent by his general to creep as close to the enemy lines as possible and learn all he can.</p></details><details><summary><b>47</b> · <i>One of the Missing</i> — Someone creeping alone toward an enemy's lines hears their own comrades already writing them off as dead.</summary><p class="sum">He passes the picket line, where a man remarks that the enemy will soon have his rifle, and creeps forward through the thicket, steady and alert.</p></details><details><summary><b>48</b> · <i>One of the Missing</i> — Someone creeping toward danger must judge from small signs whether the enemy is still there, and stake their life on the answer.</summary><p class="sum">He sees an enemy rifle-pit, watches it, reads the signs correctly and stands up: the enemy has gone.</p></details><details><summary><b>49</b> · <i>One of the Missing</i> — Someone who already knows enough to report pushes further on to be certain, into a shaky and exposed hiding place.</summary><p class="sum">To be certain, he pushes on to a derelict plantation and hides in a tumbledown shed on posts, from which he sees the enemy's rear-guard climbing a mountain road.</p></details><details><summary><b>50</b> · <i>One of the Missing</i> — Someone whose duty is to hurry back with news is tempted to stay and strike a blow that changes nothing.</summary><p class="sum">His duty is to hurry back and report, but the retreating column tempts him, and he cocks and sets his rifle to fire into it.</p></details><details><summary><b>162</b> · <i>The Mocking-Bird</i> — Someone who fears they killed a person in the dark goes back alone into danger to find out for certain.</summary><p class="sum">Granted a pass as a reward for his supposed bravery, he goes back to search for the person he believes he shot, penetrates deep into enemy country, and finally sits down, disappointed.</p></details></section><section><h2>G08 · One bold act sweeps everyone into slaughter</h2>
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<p class="pred">One person's bold act has set everyone around them in motion, and the cost is falling on the rest.</p>
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<p class="meta">A person caught up in it wants to honour the act without dying for it from the one who acted, and whoever commands. · 7 scenes from 3 stories
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(A Son of the Gods, Killed at Resaca, An Affair of Outposts) · stage <b>middle</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Rush forward with the rest. <span class='src'>from scene 44</span><br><code>nerve +</code> <code>relationships.comrades +</code> <code>standing risk</code></li><li>Call everyone back, and bear their anger. <span class='src'>from scene 45</span><br><code>relationships.comrades -</code> <code>standing +</code></li><li>Try to stop the one who started it. <span class='src'>from scene 70</span><br><code>nerve +</code> <code>standing risk</code></li><li>Hold your place as ordered. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>relationships.authority +</code> <code>relationships.comrades -</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>44</b> · <i>A Son of the Gods</i> — A crowd moved by one person's sacrifice rushes forward against orders, throwing away the very lives it was meant to save.</summary><p class="sum">His horse is killed; he stands and salutes with his sabre before he falls, and his comrades, choking with emotion, surge forward against orders into the enemy's fire.</p></details><details><summary><b>45</b> · <i>A Son of the Gods</i> — Someone in command must call back a crowd carried away by grief, knowing the sacrifice that inspired them was wasted.</summary><p class="sum">The commander, unmoved, sounds the halt; the lines fall back carrying their wounded and the dead, and the narrator laments the many needless deaths and the hero's vain devotion.</p></details><details><summary><b>70</b> · <i>Killed at Resaca</i> — Someone given a safe way to carry out an order takes the deadly way instead, and another dies trying to stop them.</summary><p class="sum">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.</p></details><details><summary><b>71</b> · <i>Killed at Resaca</i> — One person's needless display of courage sets off a fight in which many others die, and now leaves them stranded alone.</summary><p class="sum">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.</p></details><details><summary><b>115</b> · <i>An Affair of Outposts</i> — Someone retreating to save their people sees a helpless person about to be overrun, and orders everyone back to rescue them.</summary><p class="sum">The captain's remnant retreats past him; as the enemy converges on the Governor, the captain sees him and orders his few men forward to save the Governor of their State.</p></details><details><summary><b>116</b> · <i>An Affair of Outposts</i> — Someone fights savagely to protect a helpless person, not knowing they are defending the one who wronged them.</summary><p class="sum">The captain, arm broken, kills attackers with sword and revolver in a savage hand-to-hand fight over the prostrate Governor, until only a handful of his men remain.</p></details><details><summary><b>117</b> · <i>An Affair of Outposts</i> — Someone saved at a terrible price by others wakes almost unhurt, while their superiors call the slaughter glorious.</summary><p class="sum">Reinforcements arrive; the enemy tramples the last defenders and flees. The Governor wakes unhurt but for his ankle, while a general praises the beautiful fight over rows of dead and wounded.</p></details></section><section><h2>G09 · Refusing the safe way out, lest it look like fear</h2>
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<p class="pred">There is a safe way out of the danger, and you will not take it because someone might call it fear.</p>
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<p class="meta">A person proud of their courage wants never to be seen afraid from the watching crowd, or their own pride. · 6 scenes from 3 stories
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(Killed at Resaca, George Thurston, The Man and the Snake) · stage <b>middle</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Stand in the open and let them see. <span class='src'>from scene 67</span><br><code>standing +</code> <code>nerve +</code> <code>flags.reckless set</code></li><li>Refuse to yield, arms folded. <span class='src'>from scene 154</span><br><code>nerve +</code> <code>standing risk</code></li><li>Take cover like everyone else. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>standing -</code></li><li>Call for help, whatever it looks like. <span class='src'>from scene 230</span><br><code>relationships.household +</code> <code>standing -</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>67</b> · <i>Killed at Resaca</i> — Someone admired by everyone refuses ever to take cover, and the people who like them watch fearing the worst.</summary><p class="sum">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.</p></details><details><summary><b>68</b> · <i>Killed at Resaca</i> — Someone walks upright through danger where everyone else runs, while their own comrades lay bets on how soon they will fall.</summary><p class="sum">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.</p></details><details><summary><b>72</b> · <i>Killed at Resaca</i> — Someone who could save themselves by taking cover will not be seen to shelter, and stands still until they are killed.</summary><p class="sum">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.</p></details><details><summary><b>154</b> · <i>George Thurston</i> — Someone surrounded by enemies with weapons pointed at them is ordered to surrender, and simply refuses.</summary><p class="sum">In a later assault the aide is lost and found badly wounded; a captured enemy soldier says he walked straight into their line and, with rifles at his chest, folded his arms and refused to surrender.</p></details><details><summary><b>230</b> · <i>The Man and the Snake</i> — Someone faced with a danger they cannot judge will not call for help, in case it looks like fear.</summary><p class="sum">Warned that snakes sometimes escape, the guest thinks of ringing for a servant, but does not, lest he be suspected of fear; he cannot tell whether the snake is dangerous.</p></details><details><summary><b>231</b> · <i>The Man and the Snake</i> — Someone about to retreat sensibly from danger stops, ashamed to back away even when nobody is there to see.</summary><p class="sum">He resolves to back quietly out of the room, but as he lifts his foot he feels an aversion to retreating, asking himself whether bravery is only pride and whether he will retreat because no one is watching.</p></details></section><section><h2>G10 · Your courage is called into question</h2>
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<p class="pred">People doubt your courage, and you are ready to risk a great deal to prove them wrong.</p>
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<p class="meta">A person whose courage is doubted wants to be believed brave from those who doubt them. · 7 scenes from 4 stories
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(One Officer, One Man, George Thurston, A Watcher by the Dead, The Suitable Surroundings) · stage <b>middle</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Accept the dare. <span class='src'>from scene 263</span><br><code>nerve +</code> <code>standing risk</code> <code>flags.took_dare set</code></li><li>Explain yourself plainly. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>standing +</code> <code>relationships.doubters +</code></li><li>Endure it in silence and wait for a chance to show them. <span class='src'>from scene 144 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>relationships.doubters -</code> <code>standing -</code></li><li>Laugh it off. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>relationships.doubters +</code></li><li>Stand up for someone else who is being called a coward. <span class='src'>from scene 155</span><br><code>relationships.friend +</code> <code>nerve +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>145</b> · <i>One Officer, One Man</i> — Someone eager to prove their courage flinches at the very first danger, in front of the people they wanted to impress.</summary><p class="sum">He is exultant, eager to prove himself to his men and to a woman at home; then the first enemy shell shrieks toward the line and he dodges and throws up his hands.</p></details><details><summary><b>150</b> · <i>One Officer, One Man</i> — Someone who cannot bear to be thought a coward takes their own life before the danger they dreaded ever arrives.</summary><p class="sum">The sergeant behind him sees a bloody blade spring from his back; he has fallen on his sword and dies. A week later the official report lists the losses as one officer, one man.</p></details><details><summary><b>155</b> · <i>George Thurston</i> — Someone's extraordinary courage is whispered to be a way of mastering fear, and they go looking for ever greater danger.</summary><p class="sum">At the mess, a stammering quartermaster suggests the aide's folded arms are his way of mastering an urge to run; the narrator angrily defends him. Later the aide learns a giant camp swing and swings higher than anyone dares.</p></details><details><summary><b>215</b> · <i>A Watcher by the Dead</i> — A careless boast about someone else's courage turns into a dare that another person will have to face alone.</summary><p class="sum">The host says anyone locked alone all night in the dark with a corpse would crack; the student says he knows a fearless stranger who would take that on for any stake.</p></details><details><summary><b>216</b> · <i>A Watcher by the Dead</i> — Someone alone in the dark with a corpse cannot sleep, and invents polite reasons for not daring to move.</summary><p class="sum">The host accepts the wager, and the third doctor offers to play the corpse. In the dark room, the watcher cannot sleep and tells himself he stays in his chair out of respect for the dead.</p></details><details><summary><b>262</b> · <i>The Suitable Surroundings</i> — Someone is told to their face that they lack the courage to face something alone, and the taunt stings.</summary><p class="sum">The friend, suspecting the writer takes opium, teases him by asking whether the story could really frighten him; the writer says he would not dare to read it alone in a deserted house, and that he has a manuscript that would kill him.</p></details><details><summary><b>263</b> · <i>The Suitable Surroundings</i> — Someone accepts a dare to prove their courage alone at night, and is found dead the next day.</summary><p class="sum">Stung, the friend accepts the dare to read the manuscript alone at night in the deserted house. The next day three men and the boy go there, mocking his story, and find a dead body.</p></details></section><section><h2>G11 · Finding out you are afraid</h2>
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<p class="pred">You have always thought yourself brave, and now, where nobody can see, you find that you are afraid.</p>
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<p class="meta">A person who thought themselves fearless wants to master their fear from their own nerves. · 7 scenes from 4 stories
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(One of the Missing, One Officer, One Man, A Watcher by the Dead, A Holy Terror) · stage <b>low</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Tell yourself it is nothing, and look away. <span class='src'>from scene 57</span><br><code>nerve -</code></li><li>Name the fear and keep your place. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>nerve +</code> <code>standing +</code></li><li>Find one small thing to do about it. <span class='src'>from scene 62 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>nerve +</code> <code>wits +</code></li><li>Cry out for help. <span class='src'>from scene 59</span><br><code>nerve -</code> <code>relationships.comrades +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>57</b> · <i>One of the Missing</i> — Someone proud of their courage faces a danger they made themselves, and tells themselves it is nothing to fear.</summary><p class="sum">He remembers he left it cocked with a hair trigger; he feels uneasy but not afraid, recalls facing guns before, and looks away.</p></details><details><summary><b>59</b> · <i>One of the Missing</i> — Someone who has always been fearless hears terror in their own voice for the first time, and lies to themselves about it.</summary><p class="sum">He decides to wait to be found, but a pain grows in his forehead whenever he closes his eyes; he drifts into childhood memories, and when he cries out he hears fear in his own voice and denies it.</p></details><details><summary><b>61</b> · <i>One of the Missing</i> — Someone renowned for courage is broken by waiting for death, until nothing is left of them but fear.</summary><p class="sum">The pain seems to bore through his head; memory, home and glory are erased, and the strong, brave man trembles and screams with terror.</p></details><details><summary><b>146</b> · <i>One Officer, One Man</i> — Someone who flinched sees their people laughing at them, and fears that the thing they feel is cowardice.</summary><p class="sum">He sees his lieutenant and his men laughing at him and burns with shame; his idea of war collapses, he trembles and chokes, and fears that what he feels is fear.</p></details><details><summary><b>148</b> · <i>One Officer, One Man</i> — Someone left with nothing to do but wait turns inward to examine their courage, and is devastated by what they find.</summary><p class="sum">Staring at the silent wood, imagining the hidden guns, he analyses his feelings instead of fighting and groans aloud in despair at what he finds.</p></details><details><summary><b>217</b> · <i>A Watcher by the Dead</i> — Someone who prides themselves on courage catches themselves holding their breath in terror at a sound, and is furious.</summary><p class="sum">He hears a faint sound from the table and holds his breath until he nearly faints; angry, he gropes round the room in the dark and knocks over the stand.</p></details><details><summary><b>247</b> · <i>A Holy Terror</i> — Someone known for their daring is frozen by a terror that is half absurd, and cannot move or cry out.</summary><p class="sum">The absurd discovery overwhelms him with terror; he cannot breathe or move.</p></details></section><section><h2>G12 · A gaze you cannot escape</h2>
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<p class="pred">Something has fixed its eyes on you, and while you look back you cannot move, think or get away.</p>
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<p class="meta">A person held by a stare wants to break free from whatever holds them. · 8 scenes from 4 stories
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(One of the Missing, An Adventure at Brownville, The Man and the Snake, The Eyes of the Panther) · stage <b>middle</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Look away and back off slowly. <span class='src'>from scene 231 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>wits +</code> <code>standing -</code></li><li>Hold still and shield whoever is with you. <span class='src'>from scene 291</span><br><code>nerve +</code> <code>relationships.family +</code></li><li>Strike out at it. <span class='src'>from scene 297 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>nerve +</code> <code>flags.struck_blind set</code></li><li>Give in to it. <span class='src'>from scene 184</span><br><code>nerve -</code> <code>relationships.controller +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>56</b> · <i>One of the Missing</i> — Someone trapped and helpless finds their own weapon pointed straight at them, and can do nothing to turn it away.</summary><p class="sum">He sees the muzzle of his own rifle protruding from the wreckage, aimed at the exact centre of his forehead.</p></details><details><summary><b>60</b> · <i>One of the Missing</i> — Someone certain they are going to die resolves at least to die bravely, but cannot bear not knowing when.</summary><p class="sum">He cannot look away from the muzzle, beats his hand bloody in delirium, resolves at least to die game, and curses rats that climb near the trigger.</p></details><details><summary><b>184</b> · <i>An Adventure at Brownville</i> — Someone who accused a powerful person is silenced by a single look, and ends up clinging to them.</summary><p class="sum">The guardian calls her raving and fixes her with his gaze until she falls silent and clings to him weeping; an inquest finds heart disease, and neither of them goes to the funeral.</p></details><details><summary><b>191</b> · <i>An Adventure at Brownville</i> — Someone watches a person they tried to protect go to their death, and the one to blame cannot be touched.</summary><p class="sum">The guardian fixes her with his gaze; smiling but terrified, she leaps from the cliff. He coldly says it was her own act, the narrator calls him her murderer, and he walks away singing.</p></details><details><summary><b>232</b> · <i>The Man and the Snake</i> — Someone who refused to back away from danger finds themselves drawn toward it step by step against their will.</summary><p class="sum">Declaring he is not so great a coward as to fear seeming afraid to himself, he tries to step back but steps forward instead, again and again, dragging the chair, as the snake's eyes blaze and he hears strange music.</p></details><details><summary><b>233</b> · <i>The Man and the Snake</i> — Someone who breaks free of a terror for a moment cannot bear not to look at it, and is caught again.</summary><p class="sum">He sees visions, including a crowned serpent with his dead mother's eyes, then falls on his face; the fall breaks the spell, but the thought of the unseen snake is so horrible that he looks again, and is held once more.</p></details><details><summary><b>290</b> · <i>The Eyes of the Panther</i> — Someone alone with a child in the dark suddenly sees a predator's eyes watching them from close by.</summary><p class="sum">She checks her baby and holds it close, then sees two glowing eyes at the level of her own: a panther at the window.</p></details><details><summary><b>291</b> · <i>The Eyes of the Panther</i> — Someone shielding a child from a danger they cannot fight waits motionless for it to strike, unable to look away.</summary><p class="sum">The panther stands at the window watching; paralysed, she sinks to the floor shielding the baby with her body and waits through endless moments for it to spring.</p></details></section><section><h2>G13 · Alone at night with the dead</h2>
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<p class="pred">You are alone at night with the dead, and every small sound in the dark begins to seem like movement.</p>
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<p class="meta">A person keeping vigil wants to last until morning from the dead, or what seems to be. · 9 scenes from 3 stories
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(A Watcher by the Dead, A Holy Terror, The Boarded Window) · stage <b>low</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Sit tight and read until daylight. <span class='src'>from scene 213</span><br><code>nerve +</code></li><li>Light your last candle and look. <span class='src'>from scene 218</span><br><code>nerve +</code> <code>wits +</code></li><li>Force it open and face it. <span class='src'>from scene 251</span><br><code>nerve +</code> <code>flags.faced_the_dead set</code> <code>standing risk</code></li><li>Fire into the dark. <span class='src'>from scene 273 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>nerve +</code> <code>flags.struck_blind set</code></li><li>Call out for someone. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>nerve -</code> <code>relationships.neighbours +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>212</b> · <i>A Watcher by the Dead</i> — Someone is locked in overnight with a corpse, finds there is no way out, and settles down as if unconcerned.</summary><p class="sum">A man enters, the door is locked behind him, he finds the windows barred, and he calmly sits down with a book.</p></details><details><summary><b>213</b> · <i>A Watcher by the Dead</i> — Someone determined to show no fear keeps a calm watch over the dead, glancing at it now and then.</summary><p class="sum">The young man, resolute-looking, reads composedly for half an hour, glancing occasionally at the body, then moves the stand aside and returns to his chair.</p></details><details><summary><b>218</b> · <i>A Watcher by the Dead</i> — Someone enduring a terrible night checks that nothing has changed, and finds that almost no time has passed.</summary><p class="sum">He relights the candle, finds nothing changed, checks and bolts the door, sees that only half an hour has passed, and blows the candle out again.</p></details><details><summary><b>219</b> · <i>A Watcher by the Dead</i> — Someone who does not believe the dead can walk hears footsteps coming toward them in the dark.</summary><p class="sum">He berates himself as a sceptic who will not lose his bet and self-respect to savage superstition, and then hears soft footsteps approaching behind him. At dawn the host and the student drive toward the house.</p></details><details><summary><b>245</b> · <i>A Holy Terror</i> — Someone driven by greed to work alone among the dead at night is startled by their own shadow, and cannot shake the fear.</summary><p class="sum">Digging feverishly into the night, he stands the coffin on end in the grave and is terrified by his own shadow falling on it, then tries to master his fear by moving his head.</p></details><details><summary><b>249</b> · <i>A Holy Terror</i> — Someone imagining the horror behind a closed lid finds their thoughts turning to the person they love most.</summary><p class="sum">He imagines the rotted corpse behind the lid and, for the first time that day, thinks of his fiancée's photograph, contrasting her beauty with the dead face.</p></details><details><summary><b>250</b> · <i>A Holy Terror</i> — Someone becomes convinced, on the flimsiest of links, that the horror before them is the person they love.</summary><p class="sum">He links the disfigured photograph with the dead woman's nickname, which spoke of a disfigurement, and becomes convinced the woman in the coffin is his fiancée.</p></details><details><summary><b>251</b> · <i>A Holy Terror</i> — Someone who can no longer bear imagining the worst forces it open to look, and the sight destroys them.</summary><p class="sum">The coffin seems to advance; he strikes the plate with his knife hilt, the rotten lid falls away, and he is face to face with the dead woman, shrieking.</p></details><details><summary><b>272</b> · <i>The Boarded Window</i> — Someone alone in the dark with the dead hears something moving near the body, and is too terrified to act.</summary><p class="sum">He wakes in total darkness and hears soft bare footsteps; paralysed with terror, he cannot speak her name. Something crashes against the table and falls, there is a struggle, and when he reaches across, the body is gone.</p></details></section><section><h2>G14 · The one you struck in the dark</h2>
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<p class="pred">You struck at someone you could not see clearly, and the one you hurt may be someone you love.</p>
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<p class="meta">A person who struck in the dark wants to know, and to undo it from the unseen victim. · 7 scenes from 4 stories
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(One of the Missing, One Kind of Officer, The Mocking-Bird, The Eyes of the Panther) · stage <b>middle</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Go back and search until you find them. <span class='src'>from scene 162 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>nerve +</code> <code>flags.searched set</code></li><li>Keep quiet and let it be forgotten. <span class='src'>from scene 161</span><br><code>standing +</code> <code>flags.guilty_secret set</code></li><li>Keep firing until it is over. <span class='src'>from scene 137</span><br><code>standing risk</code> <code>flags.struck_blind set</code></li><li>Tell someone what you did. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>standing -</code> <code>relationships.comrades +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>65</b> · <i>One of the Missing</i> — Someone passes the body of their own relative without recognising it, and dismisses it as a long-dead stranger.</summary><p class="sum">The skirmishers pass the ruin; the brother glances at a dust-grey body in the timbers, takes it for an enemy dead a week, and moves on, checking his watch: twenty-two minutes have passed.</p></details><details><summary><b>136</b> · <i>One Kind of Officer</i> — People firing blindly at an unseen target suddenly hear it cheering close in front of them, and redouble their efforts.</summary><p class="sum">The gunners work idly, firing blind, until a great cheer bursts out of the fog close in front, and they work feverishly.</p></details><details><summary><b>137</b> · <i>One Kind of Officer</i> — Defenders in a smoke-filled position cut down a crowd storming toward them without ever seeing clearly who they are.</summary><p class="sum">Grey figures swarm up the slope into grape and canister and fall in heaps; in dense smoke a few reach the parapet and are bayoneted back into the ditch.</p></details><details><summary><b>161</b> · <i>The Mocking-Bird</i> — Someone is praised for courage they did not show, and keeps quiet about what really happened.</summary><p class="sum">He fired; the whole jumpy picket line fired and ran, but he, not knowing which way to run, stayed put and was praised for bravery. Sure he hit someone but finding no body, he kept quiet.</p></details><details><summary><b>166</b> · <i>The Mocking-Bird</i> — Someone searching for the stranger they killed in the dark finds it was the person they loved most.</summary><p class="sum">Walking back, he hears a mocking-bird and weeps, then finds in a thicket the body of his twin brother in enemy uniform, shot the night before; he never answers roll-call again.</p></details><details><summary><b>297</b> · <i>The Eyes of the Panther</i> — Someone woken at night by a terrifying presence at the window has a weapon in hand and a split second to decide.</summary><p class="sum">One night he wakes to gleaming eyes at his open window; terrified but resolute, he raises his revolver and fires.</p></details><details><summary><b>298</b> · <i>The Eyes of the Panther</i> — Someone who fired at a terror in the dark finds they have killed the person they loved.</summary><p class="sum">He hears a scream, follows a blood trail into the woods, and finds that he has killed not a panther but the woman he loved; her father mourns at her grave for years.</p></details></section><section><h2>G15 · Condemned and waiting to die</h2>
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<p class="pred">You have been condemned, the end is fixed, and all that is left to decide is how you meet it.</p>
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<p class="meta">A condemned person wants dignity, or a way out from those who condemned them. · 8 scenes from 3 stories
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(An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Parker Adderson, Philosopher, The Story of a Conscience) · stage <b>low</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Meet it with jokes. <span class='src'>from scene 96</span><br><code>nerve +</code> <code>relationships.captor +</code></li><li>Give your word to go quietly. <span class='src'>from scene 123</span><br><code>standing +</code> <code>relationships.captor +</code></li><li>Plead for more time. <span class='src'>from scene 101</span><br><code>standing -</code> <code>nerve -</code></li><li>Fix your thoughts on your family. <span class='src'>from scene 14 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>relationships.family +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>10</b> · <i>An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge</i> — Someone bound and condemned stands at the edge of their own death while the people carrying it out go calmly about it.</summary><p class="sum">A man with bound hands and a noose round his neck stands on planks laid across a railroad bridge, attended by two soldiers and a sergeant, while a captain watches and sentinels close both ends.</p></details><details><summary><b>12</b> · <i>An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge</i> — A respectable person, plainly no common criminal, is about to be put to death for something done in a cause.</summary><p class="sum">The condemned man is a well-dressed civilian planter of about thirty-five with a kindly face, plainly no common criminal.</p></details><details><summary><b>13</b> · <i>An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge</i> — Someone whose life hangs on another's single step waits for the signal, and finds their mind drifting to trifles.</summary><p class="sum">The plank he stands on is now held only by the sergeant's weight; unblindfolded, he stares at the water and watches a piece of driftwood that seems to move very slowly.</p></details><details><summary><b>96</b> · <i>Parker Adderson, Philosopher</i> — A captured prisoner facing death at dawn meets their captor's questions with jokes, as if nothing were at stake.</summary><p class="sum">A captured spy in enemy uniform is questioned by a general in his tent; he jests about his coming execution at dawn and admits why he came.</p></details><details><summary><b>98</b> · <i>Parker Adderson, Philosopher</i> — Someone condemned to die argues coolly to their captor that death holds no terror, and seems to believe it.</summary><p class="sum">The general says he has written the order for the prisoner's execution and offers a chaplain; the prisoner keeps joking and argues that death is nothing to fear.</p></details><details><summary><b>100</b> · <i>Parker Adderson, Philosopher</i> — Someone who scoffed at death is suddenly told it is coming now rather than later, and their composure breaks.</summary><p class="sum">The prisoner scoffs at fear of death as superstition; the general, uneasy, says he would not like to die tonight, then orders the provost-marshal to take the man out and shoot him at once. The prisoner cries out.</p></details><details><summary><b>101</b> · <i>Parker Adderson, Philosopher</i> — Someone who faced death with jokes begs for a few more hours, clinging to a rule that promised them time.</summary><p class="sum">The prisoner begs frantically, insisting he is entitled to be hanged in the morning under military law; the general coldly repeats the order.</p></details><details><summary><b>123</b> · <i>The Story of a Conscience</i> — A captured enemy offers their word to go quietly to their death, and their captor trusts it while refusing their hand.</summary><p class="sum">The man admits he is an enemy spy carrying plans of the fort, offers to submit without resistance if spared the indignity of being marched in at gunpoint, and is refused a handshake but trusted unguarded.</p></details></section><section><h2>G16 · Cornered, looking for a way out</h2>
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<p class="pred">You are trapped with almost no room to move, and must find whatever way out is left to you.</p>
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<p class="meta">A trapped person wants to get free from whatever holds them. · 6 scenes from 3 stories
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(An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, One of the Missing, Parker Adderson, Philosopher) · stage <b>low</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Take stock calmly, as if it were an enemy. <span class='src'>from scene 53</span><br><code>wits +</code></li><li>Seize the nearest weapon and fight. <span class='src'>from scene 102</span><br><code>nerve +</code> <code>flags.violent set</code> <code>standing risk</code></li><li>Plan a desperate escape and wait for the moment. <span class='src'>from scene 14</span><br><code>wits +</code> <code>nerve +</code></li><li>Wait to be found. <span class='src'>from scene 59 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>relationships.comrades +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>14</b> · <i>An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge</i> — Someone about to die tries to fix their last thoughts on their family, and instead finds themselves planning a desperate escape.</summary><p class="sum">Trying to think of his wife and children, he is tormented by the loud ticking of his watch; he imagines freeing his hands, diving and escaping home, and the captain nods to the sergeant.</p></details><details><summary><b>53</b> · <i>One of the Missing</i> — Someone who realises they are trapped gathers themselves to size up their situation calmly, as if it were an enemy.</summary><p class="sum">Coming round, he hears a voice saying he is caught like a rat in a trap, and calmly opens his eyes to reconnoitre and plan his defence.</p></details><details><summary><b>54</b> · <i>One of the Missing</i> — Someone pinned and helpless, unhurt but unable to move, takes stock of the little freedom left to them.</summary><p class="sum">He finds himself pinned by beams across his chest, legs and head, with only his right arm partly free; he is unhurt.</p></details><details><summary><b>55</b> · <i>One of the Missing</i> — Someone trapped tries every way to free themselves, and has to admit the first way out is no way at all.</summary><p class="sum">He tries every way to get his free hand onto the beam across his chest and cannot, and gives up that attempt.</p></details><details><summary><b>97</b> · <i>Parker Adderson, Philosopher</i> — A prisoner left almost alone with their captor quietly takes stock of their surroundings, and of the weapon within reach.</summary><p class="sum">The prisoner surveys the bare tent, noting a sabre, pistol and bowie-knife hanging on the pole; the general sends the guard off with a note.</p></details><details><summary><b>102</b> · <i>Parker Adderson, Philosopher</i> — A cornered person with nothing left to lose seizes a weapon and attacks the one who condemned them.</summary><p class="sum">Being led out, the prisoner seizes the bowie-knife and leaps on the general; the tent collapses on the struggling men, a sentinel fires, and the camp turns out.</p></details></section><section><h2>G17 · The danger you can only wait for</h2>
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<p class="pred">Danger is coming and there is nothing to do but wait for it, and the waiting is worse than the blow.</p>
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<p class="meta">A person waiting wants to hold on from the danger that has not yet come. · 7 scenes from 3 stories
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(One of the Missing, One Kind of Officer, One Officer, One Man) · stage <b>middle</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Hold your place and keep your head. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>nerve +</code></li><li>Keep busy with something small. <span class='src'>from scene 62</span><br><code>nerve +</code> <code>wits +</code></li><li>Go and meet it rather than wait. <span class='src'>from scene 63</span><br><code>nerve +</code> <code>standing risk</code></li><li>Dig in without being told. <span class='src'>from scene 131</span><br><code>relationships.comrades +</code> <code>wits +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>62</b> · <i>One of the Missing</i> — Someone paralysed by terror finds one small thing to do against the danger, and doing it steadies them.</summary><p class="sum">He works a loose strip of board free and inches it toward the rifle, hoping to push the muzzle aside or deflect the bullet; the effort steadies him, though he is still terrified.</p></details><details><summary><b>63</b> · <i>One of the Missing</i> — Someone who can no longer bear waiting for death decides to face it head on and end the waiting themselves.</summary><p class="sum">The board jams short; terror returns, then he grows calm and deliberately pushes it against the trigger. The rifle was already empty, but the shock kills him.</p></details><details><summary><b>130</b> · <i>One Kind of Officer</i> — After a day of pointless effort, a dispirited group waits through a miserable night for something worse.</summary><p class="sum">Even the weapons sound feeble; the futile day ends, and a night of discomfort gives way to a morning of apprehension.</p></details><details><summary><b>131</b> · <i>One Kind of Officer</i> — A large group senses without being told that something is badly wrong with its position, and nobody knows what.</summary><p class="sum">In thick fog the army senses its lines are badly placed; men and officers talk anxiously, commanders look for their neighbours, and troops dig in of their own accord.</p></details><details><summary><b>142</b> · <i>One Officer, One Man</i> — Someone stands in the front rank of a huge crowd waiting for a clash that everyone knows is coming.</summary><p class="sum">A captain stands at the head of his company in a vast line of battle awaiting attack; the narrator contrasts the silent order of the front with the endless confusion of the rear.</p></details><details><summary><b>143</b> · <i>One Officer, One Man</i> — Someone looks out at a calm, empty landscape and knows that death is waiting somewhere in it.</summary><p class="sum">Before him lies a peaceful, empty landscape of fields and woods, yet every man in the line knows he is face to face with death.</p></details><details><summary><b>149</b> · <i>One Officer, One Man</i> — Someone at the end of their endurance while waiting for danger suddenly sees a way out that would spare them the shame.</summary><p class="sum">The line is called to attention and waits for an order to advance that does not come; the delay is unbearable, until he looks at his sword, thinks of it as a Roman blade, and grows suddenly calm.</p></details></section><section><h2>G18 · A warning easy to laugh off</h2>
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<p class="pred">Someone has warned of a danger that sounds like superstition, and it would be easy to laugh it off.</p>
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<p class="meta">A sceptic wants to carry on as usual from the one who warned them. · 6 scenes from 3 stories
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(An Adventure at Brownville, The Man and the Snake, The Eyes of the Panther) · stage <b>middle</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Laugh it off kindly and carry on. <span class='src'>from scene 288</span><br><code>relationships.warner -</code> <code>flags.ignored_warning set</code></li><li>Stay home, just this once. <span class='src'>from scene 287</span><br><code>relationships.warner +</code> <code>money -</code></li><li>Find a sensible explanation for it. <span class='src'>from scene 294</span><br><code>wits +</code> <code>flags.ignored_warning set</code></li><li>Trust your own dread, whatever others say. <span class='src'>from scene 182</span><br><code>relationships.others -</code> <code>wits +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>182</b> · <i>An Adventure at Brownville</i> — Everyone praises a charming stranger as devoted and generous, and only one person feels dread in their presence.</summary><p class="sum">The handsome man looks him full in the face and he feels hatred and dread; the landlady says the man is the sisters' guardian, their late father's friend, devoted to them and able to pay.</p></details><details><summary><b>228</b> · <i>The Man and the Snake</i> — Someone who has just scoffed at a superstition finds the very thing it describes staring straight at them.</summary><p class="sum">A guest reading the passage scoffs at it, then notices two points of light under his bed that grow brighter and nearer; they are the eyes of a large coiled snake staring at him.</p></details><details><summary><b>234</b> · <i>The Man and the Snake</i> — Someone is being destroyed by their own terror only a floor away from people who laugh at the very idea.</summary><p class="sum">He writhes and froths on the floor, inching ever closer to the snake; downstairs, the scientist tells his wife about a new snake-eating snake and scoffs at the superstition of snakes' fascination.</p></details><details><summary><b>287</b> · <i>The Eyes of the Panther</i> — Someone begs the person they love not to leave that day because of a dread they cannot explain.</summary><p class="sum">A frontier woodsman lives devotedly with his young wife and baby in the wilderness; one morning, as he takes his rifle to hunt, she begs him to stay because of a terrible dream.</p></details><details><summary><b>288</b> · <i>The Eyes of the Panther</i> — Someone laughs off a loved one's warning, kindly, and leaves them alone, never to find them the same again.</summary><p class="sum">He laughs off her dream kindly, kisses her and the baby, and goes, closing the door on his happiness forever.</p></details><details><summary><b>294</b> · <i>The Eyes of the Panther</i> — Someone told an unbelievable story looks for a rational explanation that lets them keep their disbelief.</summary><p class="sum">The suitor recalls local tales of a panther looking in at windows at night, and theorises that the rumour fed her morbid imagination.</p></details></section><section><h2>G19 · A truth nobody would believe</h2>
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<p class="pred">You know something true that sounds impossible, and telling it would make you look a liar or a fool.</p>
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<p class="meta">A witness wants to be believed, or at least not mocked from those who would hear it. · 5 scenes from 5 stories
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(A Horseman in the Sky, The Mocking-Bird, An Adventure at Brownville, The Suitable Surroundings, The Eyes of the Panther) · stage <b>middle</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Say nothing of it. <span class='src'>from scene 9 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>standing +</code> <code>flags.kept_silent set</code></li><li>Tell it anyway and let them laugh. <span class='src'>from scene 264</span><br><code>standing -</code> <code>nerve +</code></li><li>Find proof before you speak. <span class='src'>from scene 162 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>wits +</code> <code>nerve +</code></li><li>Tell a smaller story they will believe. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>wits +</code> <code>standing +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>8</b> · <i>A Horseman in the Sky</i> — Someone who has just seen something impossible is too shaken to make sense of it, and searches in the wrong place.</summary><p class="sum">The officer watches horse and rider fall, collapses with terror, then searches for the body in the wrong place and returns to camp.</p></details><details><summary><b>163</b> · <i>The Mocking-Bird</i> — Someone praised for something they did not do sees that the truth would sound like a lie, and cannot decide what to say.</summary><p class="sum">He reflects that he is in a false position, praised for acts he did not perform, and that telling the truth would sound like a lie; he wishes he could find his man, and falls asleep.</p></details><details><summary><b>180</b> · <i>An Adventure at Brownville</i> — Someone who half doubted what they witnessed recognises one of those involved sitting right across from them.</summary><p class="sum">He half doubts he saw anything; at breakfast two sisters appear, and he recognises the elder's voice as the woman's in the wood.</p></details><details><summary><b>264</b> · <i>The Suitable Surroundings</i> — A child nobody believed is proved right in the worst way, and the doubters have to admit it.</summary><p class="sum">The men admit the boy was right; one reads the manuscript found by the body, which begins as a suicide note.</p></details><details><summary><b>285</b> · <i>The Eyes of the Panther</i> — Someone finally tells the person who loves them a dreadful truth about themselves, and the other cannot believe it.</summary><p class="sum">She tells him she is insane, or possessed, and asks him to hear her story; he is disbelieving but deeply disturbed.</p></details></section><section><h2>G20 · Your careless words cost a life</h2>
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<p class="pred">Something you said or set going lightly has cost someone their life, and now you must face what you did.</p>
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<p class="meta">A person at fault wants to escape the blame from the dead person's memory, and everyone else. · 6 scenes from 4 stories
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(Killed at Resaca, An Affair of Outposts, A Watcher by the Dead, The Suitable Surroundings) · stage <b>middle</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Go in and face what you caused. <span class='src'>from scene 221</span><br><code>standing +</code> <code>nerve +</code> <code>flags.faced_it set</code></li><li>Slip away and leave town. <span class='src'>from scene 224</span><br><code>standing risk</code> <code>flags.fled set</code></li><li>Quietly hide the proof. <span class='src'>from scene 118 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>standing +</code> <code>flags.guilty_secret set</code></li><li>Confess to the authorities. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>standing -</code> <code>relationships.authority +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>74</b> · <i>Killed at Resaca</i> — Someone faces the person whose careless words drove a friend to his death, and must decide whether to tell them.</summary><p class="sum">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.</p></details><details><summary><b>107</b> · <i>An Affair of Outposts</i> — Someone who has just helped a betrayed husband to his death is privately stung by a reminder of their own part in it.</summary><p class="sum">Alone, the Governor calls it a bad business, opens a book at a sentence about men foolish enough to believe an unfaithful wife's lies, and throws the book into the fire.</p></details><details><summary><b>220</b> · <i>A Watcher by the Dead</i> — People who set up a cruel dare for their own amusement arrive to find it has gone badly wrong.</summary><p class="sum">The host admits he regrets the wager, which pride pushed him into; the fake corpse is their friend, and as they reach the house a man runs past looking for a doctor.</p></details><details><summary><b>221</b> · <i>A Watcher by the Dead</i> — Someone whose prank has gone wrong must choose between slipping away unseen and going in to face what they caused.</summary><p class="sum">A crowd is gathering at the house; the student wants to flee and lie low, but the doctor says a physician may be needed and goes in.</p></details><details><summary><b>224</b> · <i>A Watcher by the Dead</i> — People whose game ended in a death agree without a word of it to flee before anyone connects them.</summary><p class="sum">The police clear the room; the student says the watcher has killed their friend, and the two agree to leave for Europe that afternoon.</p></details><details><summary><b>266</b> · <i>The Suitable Surroundings</i> — Someone who set out to prove another's courage has frightened them to death, and ends up mad themselves.</summary><p class="sum">A postscript tells the reader the writer will come for him after midnight; a relative of the dead friend burns the paper; a newspaper reports the writer has been committed to an asylum after being found sharpening a razor.</p></details></section><section><h2>G21 · Judged before you are heard</h2>
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<p class="pred">Everyone around you has already made up their mind about you, and nobody is waiting to hear your side.</p>
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<p class="meta">A accused person wants a fair hearing from the people who have judged them. · 6 scenes from 4 stories
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(Killed at Resaca, One Kind of Officer, One Officer, One Man, The Famous Gilson Bequest) · stage <b>middle</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Explain yourself, whatever it costs. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>standing risk</code> <code>relationships.accusers +</code></li><li>Refer them to the one who can clear you. <span class='src'>from scene 140</span><br><code>standing risk</code> <code>relationships.witness risk</code></li><li>Too proud to explain, endure it. <span class='src'>from scene 144</span><br><code>standing -</code> <code>nerve +</code></li><li>Lie low and mend your ways. <span class='src'>from scene 195</span><br><code>standing +</code> <code>money -</code></li><li>Get out before they act. <span class='src'>from scene 193 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>standing -</code> <code>flags.run_off set</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>73</b> · <i>Killed at Resaca</i> — Someone learns that a person they love would rather see them dead than hear them called a coward.</summary><p class="sum">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.</p></details><details><summary><b>140</b> · <i>One Kind of Officer</i> — Someone accused of a terrible act finds that the only person who could confirm their orders is dead.</summary><p class="sum">The captain refers him to the general who gave the order, but that general is dead; the division commander, sympathetic, begs him for anything that might excuse him, and the captain calls on his lieutenant.</p></details><details><summary><b>144</b> · <i>One Officer, One Man</i> — Someone kept from the front through no fault of their own is scorned as a shirker, and is too proud to explain.</summary><p class="sum">The captain spent two years of the war in a desk post he hated, refusing promotion out of principle; now at last at the front, he commands veterans who think him a shirker, and is too proud to explain.</p></details><details><summary><b>192</b> · <i>The Famous Gilson Bequest</i> — Someone accused before the whole community finds the verdict settled and the punishment prepared before any trial.</summary><p class="sum">A mining camp is united in condemning a man charged that morning with horse stealing; the rope and the coffin are being prepared before his trial is held.</p></details><details><summary><b>194</b> · <i>The Famous Gilson Bequest</i> — Someone suspected by a powerful and loud accuser is shut out by everyone who depends on the accuser's goodwill.</summary><p class="sum">The camp's leading citizen loudly insists the man is the thief and threatens anyone who disagrees; the saloon-keeper, to keep the citizen's custom, bars the suspect from his gaming table.</p></details><details><summary><b>195</b> · <i>The Famous Gilson Bequest</i> — Someone the whole community has already condemned keeps up their bad habits, and is finally caught in the act by their accuser.</summary><p class="sum">The camp decides he must hang; the thefts stop, but he drifts into highway robbery and horse theft, and is caught by his accuser leading away a neighbour's mare at night.</p></details></section><section><h2>G22 · A tempting chance with a hidden price</h2>
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<p class="pred">You have been handed an easy chance at what you want most, and there may be a price hidden in it.</p>
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<p class="meta">A person tempted wants the prize from whoever offered it. · 7 scenes from 3 stories
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(An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, The Famous Gilson Bequest, A Holy Terror) · stage <b>high</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Take it and go at once. <span class='src'>from scene 238 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>money +</code> <code>flags.took_the_chance set</code> <code>standing risk</code></li><li>Accept, laughing, and deal with the catch later. <span class='src'>from scene 197</span><br><code>money +</code> <code>relationships.giver +</code> <code>flags.bound_by_terms set</code></li><li>Ask who is offering, and why. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>wits +</code></li><li>Leave it alone. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>money -</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>15</b> · <i>An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge</i> — Someone who has longed to prove themselves in a cause is told of a dangerous chance to do it, and a harsh penalty.</summary><p class="sum">In a flashback, the planter, an ardent secessionist kept out of the army, longs for distinction; a grey-clad rider tells him that any civilian caught interfering with the railroad will be hanged.</p></details><details><summary><b>196</b> · <i>The Famous Gilson Bequest</i> — Someone who helped bring a person to the gallows is left everything by them, with a hidden condition attached.</summary><p class="sum">He is tried and hanged, leaving his whole estate to his captor on condition of a decent burial; a codicil is found in his pocket after death.</p></details><details><summary><b>197</b> · <i>The Famous Gilson Bequest</i> — Someone is left a fortune on condition that they spend years proving the innocence of a person they called a thief.</summary><p class="sum">The codicil gives the estate to anyone who proves in court within five years that he robbed the sluice boxes, otherwise to the executor; the executor laughs and accepts the trust.</p></details><details><summary><b>198</b> · <i>The Famous Gilson Bequest</i> — Someone who inherits a fortune must now defend the good name of the person they helped hang, against a flood of claimants.</summary><p class="sum">The estate proves enormous; claimants flood in with evidence, and the executor raises a grand monument praising the dead man's honesty and victimhood.</p></details><details><summary><b>242</b> · <i>A Holy Terror</i> — Someone discovers years late that a friend once wrote to offer them a secret fortune, and they never answered.</summary><p class="sum">An old drinking friend, now a gravedigger, wrote to him in miners' slang; he tucked the letter away unread for two years, then found and read it.</p></details><details><summary><b>243</b> · <i>A Holy Terror</i> — Someone inherits the secret of a buried fortune from a dead friend, and must dig through a grave to reach it.</summary><p class="sum">The letter said the gravedigger had struck a rich gold ledge while digging a grave and hidden it by burying a notorious woman above it; the gravedigger has since drunk himself to death. The claimant calls her a holy terror.</p></details><details><summary><b>244</b> · <i>A Holy Terror</i> — Someone about to desecrate a grave tells themselves the dead person deserved no better, to quiet their conscience.</summary><p class="sum">He knows the dead woman only from campfire gossip and a comic obituary; repeating that she was a holy terror, as if to justify himself, he sinks his pick into her grave, and a raven croaks.</p></details></section><section><h2>G23 · Turned away when you need help most</h2>
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<p class="pred">You need help badly, and the very people who should give it look on, turn away, or explain why they cannot.</p>
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<p class="meta">A person in need wants help from those who could give it. · 6 scenes from 4 stories
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(An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, The Coup de Grâce, An Affair of Outposts, The Applicant) · stage <b>low</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Ask plainly, and keep asking. <span class='src'>from scene 114</span><br><code>relationships.helpers risk</code> <code>standing -</code></li><li>Tell them who you really are. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>standing +</code> <code>relationships.helpers risk</code></li><li>Walk away into the cold. <span class='src'>from scene 210</span><br><code>standing -</code> <code>flags.turned_away set</code></li><li>Help yourself, however you can. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>nerve +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>11</b> · <i>An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge</i> — A condemned person faces a silent crowd drawn up to watch, and not one of them will move to help.</summary><p class="sum">A fort commands the bridge and a company of infantry stands motionless in line to witness the hanging; nobody moves, as military etiquette requires in the presence of death.</p></details><details><summary><b>88</b> · <i>The Coup de Grâce</i> — People cleaning up after a disaster treat the dead as numbers, while the wounded who waited for help have quietly died.</summary><p class="sum">After a hard battle, burial parties collect and count the dead; most of the wounded died of neglect while the ground was in dispute, and the enemy's dead are counted more than once for the official report.</p></details><details><summary><b>114</b> · <i>An Affair of Outposts</i> — Someone who knew only the glamour of a struggle sees its ugly reality close up, and nobody stops to help them.</summary><p class="sum">The wounded stream past, deaf to his pleas for help; retreating men fire and walk on, and he is sickened that war is ugly and brutal, nothing like the parades held in his honour.</p></details><details><summary><b>208</b> · <i>The Applicant</i> — Someone who asked for help in their last extremity is turned away with a joke on a night meant for kindness.</summary><p class="sum">The superintendent jokes that the trustees have decided his application disagrees with them; the old man cries out in despair.</p></details><details><summary><b>209</b> · <i>The Applicant</i> — Someone refused help is lectured at length on why helping them would embarrass the very institution meant to help.</summary><p class="sum">Walking him out, the superintendent pompously explains that under the peculiar circumstances his presence would embarrass the institution; the old man's tracks are already covered by snow.</p></details><details><summary><b>210</b> · <i>The Applicant</i> — Someone who built a refuge for others is turned away from it in their own need, and dies in the cold.</summary><p class="sum">The old man wanders off into a vacant lot with nowhere to go; on Christmas morning the chairman's son stumbles on his frozen body. He was the home's founder.</p></details></section><section><h2>G24 · Watching others suffer from safety</h2>
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<p class="pred">Others are suffering in front of you, you are safe yourself, and it is easy to treat it as a show.</p>
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<p class="meta">A onlooker wants to feel as they should, or not at all from the people suffering. · 7 scenes from 4 stories
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(Chickamauga, The Coup de Grâce, An Affair of Outposts, A Holy Terror) · stage <b>low</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Get down and help. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>relationships.sufferers +</code> <code>money -</code></li><li>Walk on past; there is nothing you can do. <span class='src'>from scene 89</span><br><code>relationships.sufferers -</code></li><li>Make a show of it for your companions. <span class='src'>from scene 253</span><br><code>standing +</code> <code>relationships.companions +</code></li><li>Stop the others treating it as a spectacle. <span class='src'>from scene 254</span><br><code>relationships.companions -</code> <code>standing +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>30</b> · <i>Chickamauga</i> — An innocent treats other people's agony as a game, until one of the suffering turns on them in fury.</summary><p class="sum">The child thinks the bloodied men are clowns and rides one like a horse; the man, whose lower jaw is shot away, throws him off and shakes a fist, and the child hides behind a tree.</p></details><details><summary><b>31</b> · <i>Chickamauga</i> — An innocent who understands nothing of the disaster around them puts themselves at the head of its victims and leads them on.</summary><p class="sum">A red light rises beyond the trees; the child puts himself at the head of the crawling wounded with his wooden sword and solemnly leads them toward it.</p></details><details><summary><b>33</b> · <i>Chickamauga</i> — Someone cheerfully urges on a group of the doomed, not seeing that those who reached what they wanted have died of it.</summary><p class="sum">The stones in the creek are red with blood; the strongest of the wounded drink and drown, and the child waves his cap to encourage the rest toward the fire.</p></details><details><summary><b>89</b> · <i>The Coup de Grâce</i> — Someone walks past the suffering they have no means to help, intent on finding one particular person among the fallen.</summary><p class="sum">An officer lingers uneasily among the dead at sunset, then, when the burial parties leave, strides purposefully into the forest past the moaning wounded he cannot help.</p></details><details><summary><b>108</b> · <i>An Affair of Outposts</i> — A comfortable visitor parades through a place of hardship and danger, and the people who suffer there despise them for it.</summary><p class="sum">Months later, during a sluggish campaign, the Governor tours the army with his showy civilian staff, and the soldiers in the trenches curse them as ornaments.</p></details><details><summary><b>253</b> · <i>A Holy Terror</i> — Someone who once nearly met a shameful end makes light of it in front of people who know nothing of their past.</summary><p class="sum">They pass the picked skeleton of a donkey still tethered beside a miner's kit, and at the tree the millionaire playfully loops the old rope round his neck, horrifying his wife.</p></details><details><summary><b>254</b> · <i>A Holy Terror</i> — Sightseers treat an old tragedy as entertainment, making a show of the remains while the most delicate among them protests.</summary><p class="sum">They find an open grave with two skulls and a broken coffin; a young man jumps in, and the millionaire reads aloud the coffin plate with its coarse epitaph for a local woman.</p></details></section><section><h2>G25 · Trying to save someone who will not be saved</h2>
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<p class="pred">Someone you care about is heading for harm, and refuses every help or reason you offer them.</p>
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<p class="meta">A friend wants to save them from someone set on their course. · 5 scenes from 5 stories
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(Killed at Resaca, An Affair of Outposts, George Thurston, An Adventure at Brownville, The Eyes of the Panther) · stage <b>middle</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Remonstrate with them, and be laughed off. <span class='src'>from scene 69</span><br><code>relationships.friend -</code></li><li>Threaten to go to the authorities. <span class='src'>from scene 187 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>relationships.friend -</code> <code>nerve +</code></li><li>Give them what they ask, and let them go. <span class='src'>from scene 106</span><br><code>relationships.friend +</code> <code>flags.let_them_go set</code></li><li>Shout a warning and run after them. <span class='src'>from scene 295 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>nerve +</code> <code>relationships.friend risk</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>69</b> · <i>Killed at Resaca</i> — Friends try to talk someone out of needless risks, and are laughed off with a joke they have no answer to.</summary><p class="sum">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.</p></details><details><summary><b>106</b> · <i>An Affair of Outposts</i> — Someone betrayed by the person they married seeks out danger in the hope of dying, without knowing who wronged them.</summary><p class="sum">He confesses he wants the commission in order to be killed, because his wife has been unfaithful; he does not know the other man's name. The Governor, after a cold insult, grants him a captain's commission.</p></details><details><summary><b>156</b> · <i>George Thurston</i> — Someone pushes a reckless feat further and further while everyone watching begs them to stop, and they will not.</summary><p class="sum">He drives the swing ever higher until he is nearly horizontal; everyone shouts at him to stop, a woman faints, crowds gather, and suddenly the shouting stops.</p></details><details><summary><b>186</b> · <i>An Adventure at Brownville</i> — Someone who has overheard a person in mortal danger offers to help, and is told there is nothing to be done.</summary><p class="sum">The guardian leaves singing a strange chant; the narrator urges the girl to tell him everything and let him act, since she says the man killed her sister and will kill her.</p></details><details><summary><b>284</b> · <i>The Eyes of the Panther</i> — Someone who loves a person refuses to marry them and will not say why, while the other demands to know.</summary><p class="sum">A young woman with strange, disquieting eyes tells the man she loves that she will never marry him; he angrily demands a reason, and her fixed, emotionless stare tames his anger and makes him shiver.</p></details></section><section><h2>G26 · Devoted to someone who wronged you</h2>
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<p class="pred">The person you love has wronged you badly, and you stand by them anyway, whatever it costs you.</p>
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<p class="meta">A devoted partner wants to keep them from the partner who wronged them. · 6 scenes from 3 stories
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(The Man Out of the Nose, An Adventure at Brownville, A Holy Terror) · stage <b>middle</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Keep their secret, and bear the cost. <span class='src'>from scene 171</span><br><code>relationships.partner +</code> <code>money -</code> <code>flags.kept_secret set</code></li><li>Hold to your promise out of honour. <span class='src'>from scene 241</span><br><code>standing +</code> <code>relationships.partner +</code></li><li>Deny everything to protect them. <span class='src'>from scene 187</span><br><code>relationships.partner +</code> <code>relationships.outsider -</code></li><li>Walk away. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>relationships.partner -</code> <code>standing +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>171</b> · <i>The Man Out of the Nose</i> — Someone discovers the person they married has betrayed them, and is persuaded to help keep the betrayal secret.</summary><p class="sum">His wife finds him in prison under a false name, and in a private interview he bends her to his will; she leaves broken-hearted, keeps his secret, and then disappears herself.</p></details><details><summary><b>174</b> · <i>The Man Out of the Nose</i> — Someone ruined by a love affair is cared for devotedly by the spouse they betrayed, and remains sunk in misery.</summary><p class="sum">Years later they return, broken in fortune and health, living quietly under another name; the wife is endlessly devoted and cheerful, and he is sunk in dejection.</p></details><details><summary><b>176</b> · <i>The Man Out of the Nose</i> — A devoted spouse gives up everything to care for a partner who still mourns someone else every day.</summary><p class="sum">The lover's husband, understanding everything, leaves for good; the man spends a year in an asylum with his wife caring for him, and they move near the factory so he can make his daily pilgrimage to the window.</p></details><details><summary><b>185</b> · <i>An Adventure at Brownville</i> — Someone in the power of a person they believe will kill them asks only that it be done quickly.</summary><p class="sum">Overhearing again, the narrator sees the girl and her guardian standing like lovers, and hears her calmly ask him to take her life as he took her sister's, and without delay.</p></details><details><summary><b>187</b> · <i>An Adventure at Brownville</i> — Someone trying to rescue a person in danger is told they love their tormentor, and that any accusation will be denied.</summary><p class="sum">She refuses, saying she loves the man above all and will deny everything if he goes to the authorities; then she charms him, and he finds himself in love with her.</p></details><details><summary><b>241</b> · <i>A Holy Terror</i> — Someone learns the person they are pledged to has been disfigured and released them, and stays faithful out of honour.</summary><p class="sum">She took up with a gambler who slashed her face; she wrote renouncing the engagement and sent a photograph of her scarred face, but he held to her more firmly out of honour. Then her letters stopped.</p></details></section><section><h2>G27 · Someone you thought gone for good turns up</h2>
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<p class="pred">Someone you thought gone from your life for good is suddenly in front of you, and the past comes with them.</p>
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<p class="meta">A person with a past wants to keep the present intact from someone from before. · 7 scenes from 6 stories
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(The Story of a Conscience, The Man Out of the Nose, The Famous Gilson Bequest, A Watcher by the Dead, A Holy Terror, A Lady from Redhorse) · stage <b>middle</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Face them and name them. <span class='src'>from scene 122 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>nerve +</code> <code>relationships.former risk</code></li><li>Pretend you do not know them. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>wits +</code> <code>relationships.former -</code></li><li>Make light of the past in front of others. <span class='src'>from scene 253 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>standing risk</code></li><li>Go to them, whatever the world sees. <span class='src'>from scene 175</span><br><code>relationships.former +</code> <code>standing -</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>120</b> · <i>The Story of a Conscience</i> — Someone who has just let a stranger through suddenly realises who they are, and must decide at once what to do.</summary><p class="sum">The civilian shows his pass with a hint of irony and walks on whistling; suddenly the captain draws his revolver and runs after him.</p></details><details><summary><b>175</b> · <i>The Man Out of the Nose</i> — Someone meets the person they gave up everything for by chance, and the meeting ends in disaster in front of a crowd.</summary><p class="sum">Wandering one day, he sees his former lover at a window; she cries out, leans out too far and falls to her death, and he sits on the pavement cradling her broken body.</p></details><details><summary><b>202</b> · <i>The Famous Gilson Bequest</i> — Someone full of remorse for a person they wronged sees that person's ghost appear before them, still at their old tricks.</summary><p class="sum">He sees the dead man's ghost panning the dust of the other flooded coffins into its own; in the morning the executor is found dead in the cemetery.</p></details><details><summary><b>225</b> · <i>A Watcher by the Dead</i> — People who ran from a death they caused years ago are confronted by someone they believed long dead.</summary><p class="sum">Seven years later a white-haired stranger approaches the two in a park, and reveals he is their friend who played the corpse, not the watcher.</p></details><details><summary><b>252</b> · <i>A Holy Terror</i> — Someone who escaped disgrace and rose to wealth returns carelessly to the scene of their shady past, with company.</summary><p class="sum">Months later, a rich society party passes through; the leader, once a gambler in the camp who narrowly escaped hanging there, shows his wife and friends the hanging tree.</p></details><details><summary><b>279</b> · <i>A Lady from Redhorse</i> — Someone hiding a humble past from the person they love fears that an acquaintance from those days will give them away.</summary><p class="sum">She confesses she is ashamed of her origins before the man she loves, and frightened that a relative of her dead playmate staying at the hotel will recognise and expose her.</p></details><details><summary><b>282</b> · <i>A Lady from Redhorse</i> — Someone ashamed of their humble past learns that the person they love shared it, and has loved them since.</summary><p class="sum">She sobs and calls him a thug; he kneels tenderly, declares he has loved her for years, and reveals that he is the ragged childhood playmate she thought dead.</p></details></section><section><h2>G28 · Coming home too late</h2>
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<p class="pred">You come back to the people you left behind and find you have arrived too late to help them.</p>
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<p class="meta">A person returning home wants to find them safe from the family they left. · 5 scenes from 4 stories
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(Chickamauga, The Affair at Coulter's Notch, The Boarded Window, The Eyes of the Panther) · stage <b>middle</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Stay with them and grieve. <span class='src'>from scene 87</span><br><code>relationships.family +</code> <code>standing -</code></li><li>Nurse them yourself, far from help. <span class='src'>from scene 270</span><br><code>relationships.family +</code> <code>money -</code></li><li>Go for help at once. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>relationships.neighbours +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>34</b> · <i>Chickamauga</i> — Someone returns to the home they wandered from and finds it destroyed and the person they love dead, and cannot even cry out.</summary><p class="sum">He reaches a burning house and dances before it, then recognises it as his own home and finds his mother dead, killed by a shell; he is a deaf mute and can only make wordless cries.</p></details><details><summary><b>86</b> · <i>The Affair at Coulter's Notch</i> — Someone discovers that the destruction they ordered has killed a mother and child hidden where no one had looked.</summary><p class="sum">In the cellar they find a man clasping a dead woman and a dead baby, killed by a shell that broke through the floor above.</p></details><details><summary><b>87</b> · <i>The Affair at Coulter's Notch</i> — Someone forced to obey an order has destroyed their own home and family with their own hands, and sits with the dead.</summary><p class="sum">The man raises his blackened face and calmly says the house is his, the dead are his wife and child, and he is the captain who shelled it.</p></details><details><summary><b>270</b> · <i>The Boarded Window</i> — Someone alone and far from help watches the person they love die, and is too numb to believe it.</summary><p class="sum">He came home to find his wife delirious with fever, far from any help; after three days of nursing she seemed to die. Numb, he prepares her for burial, fumbling, surprised he cannot weep, telling himself it must be all right.</p></details><details><summary><b>292</b> · <i>The Eyes of the Panther</i> — Someone comes home too late to find their partner driven mad by terror, and their child dead in their arms.</summary><p class="sum">The husband returns late, finds the window open, and his wife cowering; she laughs madly and hands him the baby, which she has crushed to death in her embrace. The woman telling the story falls silent.</p></details></section><section><h2>G29 · Alone with an old grief</h2>
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<p class="pred">You live alone with an old grief, keeping a habit nobody understands, and people have stopped asking why.</p>
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<p class="meta">A recluse wants to keep faith with what they lost from neighbours who do not understand. · 5 scenes from 3 stories
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(The Man Out of the Nose, The Boarded Window, The Eyes of the Panther) · stage <b>middle</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Keep to your ritual. <span class='src'>from scene 168</span><br><code>relationships.neighbours -</code> <code>flags.ritual set</code></li><li>Shut away whatever reminds you. <span class='src'>from scene 268</span><br><code>standing -</code></li><li>Tell someone the story at last. <span class='src'>filled gap</span><br><code>relationships.neighbours +</code></li><li>Move on, as everyone else has. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>money +</code> <code>relationships.neighbours +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>167</b> · <i>The Man Out of the Nose</i> — Someone living in poverty keeps a strange daily ritual with exact punctuality, and nobody around them knows why.</summary><p class="sum">A shack shaped like a face stands on a poor hillside terrace; every day at exactly two o'clock a well-dressed man steps out of its door and checks his watch.</p></details><details><summary><b>168</b> · <i>The Man Out of the Nose</i> — Someone walks past the same empty window every day in hope, while a devoted spouse quietly supports them.</summary><p class="sum">He walks round a block, staring over his shoulder at a dusty upper window of a factory where nothing ever appears, and returns home, where his wife, a washerwoman who supports them both, helps him in.</p></details><details><summary><b>267</b> · <i>The Boarded Window</i> — Someone stays on alone in a place everyone else has left, never smiling and never saying why they stay.</summary><p class="sum">Among restless frontier settlers who kept moving west, one silent man stayed on alone in a log house in the forest, living by selling skins and letting his once-cleared land go back to wilderness.</p></details><details><summary><b>268</b> · <i>The Boarded Window</i> — Someone aged by an old grief keeps one part of their home shut up for good, and nobody knows the reason.</summary><p class="sum">His cabin has a single window, boarded up for as long as anyone remembers; he looks seventy but is fifty, aged by something besides years. The narrator heard his story from his grandfather.</p></details><details><summary><b>296</b> · <i>The Eyes of the Panther</i> — Someone rejected by the person they love lives on alone near them, the refusal known to everyone.</summary><p class="sum">He sees her reach her father's door, and no panther. He lives alone in a cottage by the forest, publicly known to have been rejected by her.</p></details></section><section><h2>G30 · Lost in the dark, far from help</h2>
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<p class="pred">You are lost at night far from anyone who knows you, and the way home looks strange and wrong.</p>
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<p class="meta">A lost person wants to get home from the dark country around them. · 6 scenes from 3 stories
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(An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Chickamauga, The Suitable Surroundings) · stage <b>high</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Push on by the stars. <span class='src'>from scene 256</span><br><code>nerve +</code> <code>wits +</code></li><li>Lie down and wait for daylight. <span class='src'>from scene 27</span><br><code>nerve -</code></li><li>Go toward the light, whatever it is. <span class='src'>from scene 31 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>nerve +</code> <code>standing risk</code></li><li>Turn back the way you came. <span class='src'>archetype</span><br><code>wits +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>22</b> · <i>An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge</i> — Someone who seems to have escaped certain death is overwhelmed with joy, then finds the familiar world strangely changed.</summary><p class="sum">A whirlpool flings him ashore out of sight; he weeps with joy, then grapeshot sends him running into a forest that seems endless and uncanny.</p></details><details><summary><b>23</b> · <i>An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge</i> — Someone struggling home to their family finds the road and the stars wrong, and their own body failing them.</summary><p class="sum">Exhausted and starving, he follows a strange straight road under unfamiliar stars, hearing whispers in an unknown tongue, his neck swollen and his feet no longer feeling the ground.</p></details><details><summary><b>27</b> · <i>Chickamauga</i> — A child who ran from a small fright is lost far from home, while a parent searches desperately and cannot find them.</summary><p class="sum">A rabbit sends him fleeing in terror; lost and torn by brambles, he cries himself to sleep between two rocks while distant thunder sounds and his mother searches frantically at home.</p></details><details><summary><b>28</b> · <i>Chickamauga</i> — A lost child alone at dusk sees strange shapes creeping toward them, too many to count, and cannot tell what they are.</summary><p class="sum">Waking at dusk, he goes the wrong way and sees strange shapes approaching, many of them, all moving toward the brook.</p></details><details><summary><b>256</b> · <i>The Suitable Surroundings</i> — Someone lost alone at night sees a light where no light should be, in a place with a bad name.</summary><p class="sum">A farm boy, lost at midnight while searching for missing cows, follows a bridle path through a dark forest and sees a light near a deserted house.</p></details><details><summary><b>257</b> · <i>The Suitable Surroundings</i> — Someone who once mocked what they feared must pass it alone at night, and refuses to turn back.</summary><p class="sum">The house is reputed haunted, and the boy himself once helped smash its windows; shaking with fear and guilt, he refuses to turn back and walks past.</p></details></section><section><h2>G31 · New to a hardened company</h2>
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<p class="pred">You have joined a hardened group that does not know you, and they have already made up their minds about you.</p>
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<p class="meta">A newcomer wants to be accepted from the old hands. · 3 scenes from 3 stories
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(A Son of the Gods, Killed at Resaca, George Thurston) · stage <b>middle</b></p>
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<h3>Options</h3><ol><li>Prove yourself in the first danger. <span class='src'>from scene 67 <span class="warn">(outside this group)</span></span><br><code>nerve +</code> <code>relationships.comrades +</code> <code>standing risk</code></li><li>Keep to yourself and do your work. <span class='src'>from scene 151</span><br><code>relationships.comrades -</code></li><li>Dress and carry yourself as you please, and let them laugh. <span class='src'>from scene 37</span><br><code>standing -</code> <code>nerve +</code></li><li>Win them over with good manners. <span class='src'>from scene 66</span><br><code>relationships.comrades +</code></li></ol>
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<h3>Scenes</h3><details><summary><b>37</b> · <i>A Son of the Gods</i> — A showy young newcomer rides in front of hardened veterans, who laugh at him as a vain fool.</summary><p class="sum">The commander orders the skirmish line forward; a young officer in full dress on a white horse with a scarlet blanket gallops up, and the whole line laughs at his vanity.</p></details><details><summary><b>66</b> · <i>Killed at Resaca</i> — A gifted newcomer joins a close-knit group whose members know nothing of him, and quickly stands out among them.</summary><p class="sum">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.</p></details><details><summary><b>151</b> · <i>George Thurston</i> — An aloof newcomer joins a hard-pressed group that does not take to them, while everyone else is too busy to care.</summary><p class="sum">The narrator, a map-maker on a brigade staff, describes an unsociable new aide nobody liked, and his own dangerous work surveying close to enemy lines.</p></details></section>
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<section><h2>Unassigned (98)</h2><p class="meta">Scenes that fit no situation recurring in three or more stories.</p><details><summary><b>4</b> · <i>A Horseman in the Sky</i> — Someone on watch sees an enemy standing in plain view, looking straight down at the comrades they are meant to protect.</summary><p class="sum">He sees on the cliff edge a Confederate horseman, motionless as a statue, looking down into the valley where the regiments hide.</p></details><details><summary><b>17</b> · <i>An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge</i> — Someone who should already be dead believes they have been given an impossible second chance, and grabs at it.</summary><p class="sum">Falling through the bridge, he feels agony and swinging, then plunges into the water; he believes the rope has broken and rises toward the surface, determined not to be shot.</p></details><details><summary><b>18</b> · <i>An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge</i> — Someone whose body fights to live against their own will struggles to the surface in unbearable pain.</summary><p class="sum">His hands seem to free themselves and tear off the noose; in agony, he surfaces and draws a great shrieking breath.</p></details><details><summary><b>19</b> · <i>An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge</i> — Someone escaping death sees the world with impossible clarity, and sees the people who meant to kill them pointing at them.</summary><p class="sum">His senses are unnaturally sharp; he sees every leaf and insect, and turning, sees his executioners on the bridge pointing and shouting at him.</p></details><details><summary><b>20</b> · <i>An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge</i> — Someone fleeing for their life hears the calm order that will send a volley after them, and has only seconds to hide.</summary><p class="sum">The sentinels fire and miss; a lieutenant calmly orders a volley, and he dives deep as the bullets sink around him.</p></details><details><summary><b>21</b> · <i>An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge</i> — Someone hunted by a far stronger force keeps their head and tries to reason out the enemy's next move.</summary><p class="sum">He swims downstream, reasoning coolly about the next volley, as the fort's cannon sends a shot plunging near him; he resolves to watch the gun's smoke.</p></details><details><summary><b>24</b> · <i>An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge</i> — Someone reaches home and the person they love at last, only for it all to prove a dying dream.</summary><p class="sum">He reaches his home and his wife comes smiling to meet him, but as he reaches for her there is a blow and blinding light; he was hanged, and his body swings beneath the bridge.</p></details><details><summary><b>25</b> · <i>Chickamauga</i> — A child who has slipped away from home unseen is thrilled by freedom, with no idea of the danger ahead.</summary><p class="sum">A small child slips away from his poor home into a forest, delighted by freedom and the chance of adventure.</p></details><details><summary><b>26</b> · <i>Chickamauga</i> — A child playing at the glory an elder taught them pushes further and further from safety, sure of their own victory.</summary><p class="sum">The six-year-old son of a planter who was once a soldier plays at war with a wooden sword, chasing imaginary enemies across a brook far from home.</p></details><details><summary><b>29</b> · <i>Chickamauga</i> — Someone comes upon a vast crowd of the dying, all crawling silently toward water, and does not understand what they see.</summary><p class="sum">They are wounded men, hundreds of them, crawling toward the creek on hands and knees; some stop and die, others gesture as if praying.</p></details><details><summary><b>32</b> · <i>Chickamauga</i> — Someone slept through a catastrophe that happened all around them, and now walks through its wreckage without knowing it.</summary><p class="sum">The ground is littered with the debris of a retreat; a battle had been fought all around the sleeping child hours before, and he heard none of it.</p></details><details><summary><b>36</b> · <i>A Son of the Gods</i> — People who have fought an unseen enemy for days study the signs they left, trying to guess whether they are truly gone.</summary><p class="sum">The narrator reflects on how strange the enemy's leavings seem, and reads from the tracks that the enemy withdrew in good order up the hill rather than fleeing.</p></details><details><summary><b>39</b> · <i>A Son of the Gods</i> — Someone takes a mortal risk alone while a whole crowd holds its breath, unable to do anything but watch.</summary><p class="sum">The whole army watches in silence; the horseman swerves toward a break in the wall, meaning to ride through and see what lies beyond.</p></details><details><summary><b>43</b> · <i>A Son of the Gods</i> — Someone who has drawn every enemy weapon onto themselves races for home while their comrades cheer and the danger spreads to them.</summary><p class="sum">He dashes at the wall, then turns and races back; the wall erupts in rifle fire and artillery, he survives the first volley to a great cheer, and shells begin falling among the watching troops.</p></details><details><summary><b>51</b> · <i>One of the Missing</i> — A careless act by a stranger far away, done only to pass the time, is about to decide someone's fate.</summary><p class="sum">The narrator traces how fate brought a deserter from Europe to command an enemy battery two miles away, where, idling, he fires a shot at what he takes for enemy officers, and it flies high.</p></details><details><summary><b>52</b> · <i>One of the Missing</i> — Someone knocked senseless in an instant wakes believing they are already dead and buried, unable to speak to those they love.</summary><p class="sum">The stray shell smashes a post and brings the shed down on him; half-conscious, he imagines himself buried with his widow kneeling on his grave.</p></details><details><summary><b>58</b> · <i>One of the Missing</i> — Someone trapped under a threat they cannot remove tries to distract themselves, and their thoughts drift to their family.</summary><p class="sum">Struggling to free his feet, he fears disturbing the rifle; he recalls a past blunder with a loaded weapon, then distracts himself with the trees and the thought that he faces north, toward his family.</p></details><details><summary><b>64</b> · <i>One of the Missing</i> — Someone waiting anxiously for a relative sent into danger hears a distant sound, and is ordered forward before knowing what it means.</summary><p class="sum">The scout's brother, commanding the picket line, hears a distant crash and notes the time; he is then ordered to advance, since the enemy is thought to have retreated.</p></details><details><summary><b>82</b> · <i>The Affair at Coulter's Notch</i> — Someone hurries to call off an order they now know was malicious, afraid of what they will find when they arrive.</summary><p class="sum">The colonel races down the hill with his retinue to the notch, where the sight appals them.</p></details><details><summary><b>83</b> · <i>The Affair at Coulter's Notch</i> — People carrying out a hopeless order keep at it with mad devotion, each one stepping in as the one before falls.</summary><p class="sum">Four guns lie wrecked in the notch; the half-naked, bloodied survivors work the fifth like madmen, sponging it with their comrades' blood, each man replaced as he falls.</p></details><details><summary><b>84</b> · <i>The Affair at Coulter's Notch</i> — Someone steps into a scene of carnage to end it, and finds the person they sent there changed almost beyond recognition.</summary><p class="sum">Riding over the dead to the gun, the colonel stops the firing; a blackened, fiendish figure turns to him and obeys his signal to withdraw. It is the captain.</p></details><details><summary><b>85</b> · <i>The Affair at Coulter's Notch</i> — Victors settle comfortably into the home they wrecked, until someone uneasy reports a presence hidden below them.</summary><p class="sum">The enemy stops firing too, having long since retreated; the brigade camps on the enemy's ground and the colonel's staff settle comfortably in the shattered plantation house, until an orderly reports something wrong in the cellar.</p></details><details><summary><b>90</b> · <i>The Coup de Grâce</i> — Someone searching the fallen finds their oldest friend still alive, and the friend's brother is their bitterest enemy.</summary><p class="sum">He finds and touches a body that screams; he is a captain whose childhood friend enlisted as a sergeant to stay near him, and who loathes his friend's cynical brother, the regiment's major.</p></details><details><summary><b>92</b> · <i>The Coup de Grâce</i> — Someone discovers that a friend left for dead has suffered something far worse than a wound, and turns away sickened.</summary><p class="sum">The sergeant's belly has been torn open and his clothes ripped apart; the captain cannot understand the wound until he sees a herd of swine feeding on the fallen nearby.</p></details><details><summary><b>93</b> · <i>The Coup de Grâce</i> — Someone watching a friend in hopeless agony sees in their eyes a plea to be put out of their misery.</summary><p class="sum">The friend is still alive, speechless and screaming when touched, his eyes begging for death; the captain repeats his name until he chokes with emotion.</p></details><details><summary><b>94</b> · <i>The Coup de Grâce</i> — Someone steels themselves to end a loved one's suffering with their own hand, and finds they have already spent the means.</summary><p class="sum">Weeping, he walks away and shoots a wounded horse, watching its long death struggle; then he returns, holds the pistol to his friend's forehead and pulls the trigger, but his last cartridge was spent on the horse.</p></details><details><summary><b>99</b> · <i>Parker Adderson, Philosopher</i> — Someone who holds another's life in their hands is shaken by the prisoner's calm and admits to their own fear of death.</summary><p class="sum">The prisoner argues there is no such thing as dying, only a last pain; the general, who has a revolver in his lap, shudders and whispers that death is horrible.</p></details><details><summary><b>103</b> · <i>Parker Adderson, Philosopher</i> — Someone whose desperate attack has only made matters worse cowers in terror, while a bystander seizes the chance to make himself important.</summary><p class="sum">The provost-marshal is dead with the knife in his throat and the general badly wounded; the spy cowers in terror while the returning guard tells his story to anyone who will listen; the general orders the spy shot.</p></details><details><summary><b>104</b> · <i>Parker Adderson, Philosopher</i> — Someone who mocked death dies begging for their life, while the one who dreaded it dies at peace.</summary><p class="sum">Officers think the general delirious, but the adjutant produces his written order and has it carried out; the spy is shot begging for his life, and the general dies peacefully a moment later.</p></details><details><summary><b>109</b> · <i>An Affair of Outposts</i> — Someone insists on seeking out the person they secretly wronged, walking toward danger they do not understand.</summary><p class="sum">A general warns the Governor that only a line of skirmishers lies ahead; the Governor insists on meeting the captain he commissioned and goes forward alone on foot to a company waiting at the front.</p></details><details><summary><b>110</b> · <i>An Affair of Outposts</i> — Someone offers a hand to a person they owe, and receives only a correct and chilly salute in return.</summary><p class="sum">The captain, aged and scarred almost beyond recognition, salutes the Governor formally but will not shake his hand; the Governor begins to say whose hand it is.</p></details><details><summary><b>111</b> · <i>An Affair of Outposts</i> — A sudden attack interrupts a tense meeting, and a small group must form up at once under fire.</summary><p class="sum">Firing breaks out from the front; the captain calmly calls his company into line as bullets fly and wounded men stream back.</p></details><details><summary><b>112</b> · <i>An Affair of Outposts</i> — A leader's calm voice holds frightened people steady under fire, while an important visitor loses their nerve and runs.</summary><p class="sum">The captain's calm sing-song commands steady his raw soldiers into acting like veterans; the Governor, torn between pride and terror, runs when the skirmishers fall back.</p></details><details><summary><b>113</b> · <i>An Affair of Outposts</i> — Someone important who ran from danger is left stranded and helpless, unable to go on, as the fighting comes their way.</summary><p class="sum">Fleeing through the jungle, the Governor sprains his ankle leaping a brook, and sits helpless on the ground.</p></details><details><summary><b>118</b> · <i>An Affair of Outposts</i> — Someone learns that the person who died saving them knew of their betrayal, and quietly hides the proof.</summary><p class="sum">The Governor finds a letter from the captain's wife confessing her sin and naming him, and quietly pockets it; he jokes with the surgeons, accepts a review in his honour, and does not touch the captain's covered body beside him.</p></details><details><summary><b>124</b> · <i>The Story of a Conscience</i> — Someone begins to tell the prisoner in their power about a debt they owe them from years ago, which they never repaid.</summary><p class="sum">Next morning the captain tells the spy he knew him years before as a deserter awaiting execution, guarded one stormy night by an exhausted soldier ordered to kill him if he rose.</p></details><details><summary><b>125</b> · <i>The Story of a Conscience</i> — Someone whose life was once spared by the person now in their power learns that the other knew them all along and never begged.</summary><p class="sum">The guard fell asleep at his post; the prisoner could have escaped and left him to be shot, but let him sleep and woke him before the relief came. The spy knew the captain all along; the captain weeps.</p></details><details><summary><b>129</b> · <i>One Kind of Officer</i> — A whole group does the bare minimum after a miserable day, and the one in charge takes it for cowardice.</summary><p class="sum">After an indecisive day of fighting in rain and mud, the whole army is sullen and does no more than its duty; the general calls it cowardly, his adjutant says it is only cold.</p></details><details><summary><b>132</b> · <i>One Kind of Officer</i> — Someone holding a strong position works out that they are on the exposed edge, with nobody else beyond them.</summary><p class="sum">The captain's battery holds a strong earthwork on what, by his compass, seems to be the extreme left flank of the army, with no troops visible beyond.</p></details><details><summary><b>133</b> · <i>One Kind of Officer</i> — Someone left alone to hold a position hears from their people that support has gone and something is approaching.</summary><p class="sum">Alone in the fog, the captain is told by a sergeant that the infantry has been withdrawn, the front is unguarded, and men have heard the enemy's guns moving toward the works.</p></details><details><summary><b>135</b> · <i>One Kind of Officer</i> — A superior learns too late that friends were placed where they told a subordinate to fire, just as the firing starts.</summary><p class="sum">The division commander reveals another friendly brigade was sent overnight beyond the battery; cannon fire breaks out on the left, the enemy attacks everywhere, and the battery fires steadily into the fog.</p></details><details><summary><b>147</b> · <i>One Officer, One Man</i> — Someone who imagined glorious death is forced to lie beside a real one, sickened, with nowhere else to look.</summary><p class="sum">Battle begins on the right; rifle fire from the woods kills the man beside him, everyone lies down, and he lies sickened beside the yellowing corpse, unable to turn away without facing from his men.</p></details><details><summary><b>157</b> · <i>George Thurston</i> — Someone who faced every danger with defiance meets a senseless end in front of hardened witnesses who cannot bear to look.</summary><p class="sum">He lets go of the rope and flies up past a branch, then pitches down with a sickening impact; the hardened soldiers turn sick, and his body lies broken with its arms folded across the breast.</p></details><details><summary><b>158</b> · <i>The Mocking-Bird</i> — Someone alone and far outside the safety of their own side sits brooding, where being caught could mean death.</summary><p class="sum">A Union private sits against a pine deep in the forest, far outside the lines, looking as if he were asleep.</p></details><details><summary><b>159</b> · <i>The Mocking-Bird</i> — Someone cannot stop turning over what happened on a night they were left alone to keep watch in the dark.</summary><p class="sum">He is troubled by the previous night, when he stood sentry at a lonely post in this forest on an over-extended picket line.</p></details><details><summary><b>169</b> · <i>The Man Out of the Nose</i> — A devoted spouse spends everything keeping up the appearance of the person they married, long after their fortune is gone.</summary><p class="sum">The man, prematurely aged, is kept neatly dressed by his wife's scanty earnings; thirty years before, the couple were rich, cultivated and apparently happy, and she was proud of him.</p></details><details><summary><b>170</b> · <i>The Man Out of the Nose</i> — Someone caught leaving a lover's home at night takes the blame for a crime rather than let the truth come out.</summary><p class="sum">The husband fell in love with a visiting friend's wife; caught leaving her house at night, he tried to bribe the policeman and gave a false name, with only her jewelled portrait on him.</p></details><details><summary><b>172</b> · <i>The Man Out of the Nose</i> — Someone must swear to a lie that will send the person they love to prison, or ruin their own family.</summary><p class="sum">He pleads guilty; the lover, ill, twice refuses to testify, tears up her statement, embraces her children in tears, and finally swears she knows nothing and faints.</p></details><details><summary><b>173</b> · <i>The Man Out of the Nose</i> — Someone who kept silent to protect a lover serves their sentence, and the spouse they betrayed is waiting at the gate.</summary><p class="sum">He is sentenced to three years, his lawyer having made no defence; on release his wife meets him at the gate and they go abroad, selling everything.</p></details><details><summary><b>177</b> · <i>An Adventure at Brownville</i> — Someone walking home alone at dusk by a lonely short cut is tired, and not expecting anything to happen.</summary><p class="sum">A country schoolmaster lodging at a boarding-house in a resort town for invalids walks home late at dusk by a little-used wooded trail after finishing his report to the trustees.</p></details><details><summary><b>178</b> · <i>An Adventure at Brownville</i> — Someone alone in the dark overhears an unseen stranger threatening a woman's life, and cannot see who is speaking.</summary><p class="sum">Resting on a log, he hears unseen voices: a man threatening that she and another will suffer if she does not let things stand, and a woman asking whether he would murder them.</p></details><details><summary><b>179</b> · <i>An Adventure at Brownville</i> — Someone who decides to intervene in a threat they overheard steps forward, and the people involved simply vanish.</summary><p class="sum">He glimpses a tall man in black and a woman in grey; she sinks to her knees in supplication, and when he springs up to intervene, both vanish.</p></details><details><summary><b>181</b> · <i>An Adventure at Brownville</i> — Someone who overheard a secret they had no right to hear resolves to find out more, without stooping to spy.</summary><p class="sum">Afraid of being recognised as an eavesdropper, he leaves; he hears a fine male voice singing an aria that displeases him, and later sees the man in black with the elder sister, and resolves to find out about them honourably.</p></details><details><summary><b>183</b> · <i>An Adventure at Brownville</i> — Someone grieving a sudden death turns on the person everyone trusts and accuses them before a crowd.</summary><p class="sum">A month passes without incident; then the elder sister is found dead in bed, and the younger turns on the guardian and accuses him of killing her.</p></details><details><summary><b>188</b> · <i>An Adventure at Brownville</i> — Someone who meant to rescue another finds themselves drawn into a secret flirtation behind the back of the one they feared.</summary><p class="sum">They walk the veranda as she chatters as though bereavement never happened; he feels part of an intrigue and arranges to walk with her the next day, if the guardian is away.</p></details><details><summary><b>189</b> · <i>An Adventure at Brownville</i> — Someone falls deeper under the spell of a person they know is in danger, and loses sight of the danger.</summary><p class="sum">On the walk she is capricious and fascinating, jesting and singing by turns, and he falls deeper in love at every step.</p></details><details><summary><b>190</b> · <i>An Adventure at Brownville</i> — Someone alone with the person they hoped to protect is joined by the very one they feared, and is welcomed with joy.</summary><p class="sum">She leads him to a high cliff-top; the guardian appears, saying he saw them from the road, and her face transfigures with love as she greets him.</p></details><details><summary><b>193</b> · <i>The Famous Gilson Bequest</i> — Someone driven out of one place finds everyone who drove them out has followed them to the next.</summary><p class="sum">The accused had been run out of a neighbouring camp and came here just before its whole population followed; living by cards, he is suspected of robbing the sluice boxes at night.</p></details><details><summary><b>199</b> · <i>The Famous Gilson Bequest</i> — Someone wins a long, corrupt fight to keep what was left to them, and the victory leaves everything around them rotten.</summary><p class="sum">For five years he fights the claims with lawyers, bribes and false witnesses, corrupting the whole territory, and wins; that night a flood topples the monument and exposes the coffin.</p></details><details><summary><b>200</b> · <i>The Famous Gilson Bequest</i> — Someone who argued a lie for years has come to believe it completely, and it has cost them everything they gained.</summary><p class="sum">The executor, aged and broken by the struggle, now believes absolutely in the dead man's innocence; he has spent the last of the estate on the last witness, and is drawn to the flooded cemetery.</p></details><details><summary><b>201</b> · <i>The Famous Gilson Bequest</i> — Someone who helped hang a person weeps over what they now believe was a false accusation.</summary><p class="sum">Sitting on the fallen monument, he weeps with remorse, believing he caused an innocent man's death by false accusation, since the mare's owner later swore, for a fee, that the theft was arranged.</p></details><details><summary><b>203</b> · <i>The Applicant</i> — A child playing in fresh snow stumbles on something hidden beneath it that the grown-ups would rather not explain.</summary><p class="sum">The son of a village's leading citizen, breaking a path through fresh snow for his little sister, strikes his foot against something hidden beneath it.</p></details><details><summary><b>204</b> · <i>The Applicant</i> — Someone who gave away a fortune for the good of others has long since vanished, remembered only as a name.</summary><p class="sum">A great, ugly home for poor old men stands on the hill, endowed by a merchant who gave away half a million dollars, then left for abroad; he has never returned and is now only a name carved over the door.</p></details><details><summary><b>205</b> · <i>The Applicant</i> — Someone put in charge of a charity resents the very people it was built to help, and wishes they were someone else.</summary><p class="sum">The home's superintendent resents the ungrateful old inmates and dreams of running it for prosperous paying guests; the old men live out their lives and are replaced.</p></details><details><summary><b>206</b> · <i>The Applicant</i> — Someone old, poor and ragged makes their way through the cold to ask a charity to take them in.</summary><p class="sum">A ragged old man trudges up the street toward the home on a winter evening, plainly an applicant, since poverty is the qualification.</p></details><details><summary><b>207</b> · <i>The Applicant</i> — Someone in need comes humbly to the side door on a festive night, and the person inside is on their way out.</summary><p class="sum">Avoiding the lamp at the main door, he rings at a side door; the superintendent, jovial and dressed to go out and buy Christmas presents for his children, does not invite him in.</p></details><details><summary><b>211</b> · <i>A Watcher by the Dead</i> — A body has been laid out behind sealed doors in an empty building, as if for some purpose not yet explained.</summary><p class="sum">In a dusty upper room of an empty house, a body lies under a sheet on a kitchen table beside a candle, an armchair and a reading-stand, with the windows shut and blinds drawn.</p></details><details><summary><b>214</b> · <i>A Watcher by the Dead</i> — Someone alone with the dead chooses to sit in darkness to save their last light, while others idly debate human fear.</summary><p class="sum">He inspects the face under the sheet, pockets matches and blows out the short candle to save it. Elsewhere, three young doctors over punch discuss whether fear of the dead is inherited and incurable.</p></details><details><summary><b>222</b> · <i>A Watcher by the Dead</i> — Someone sees the person they put up to a dare burst out transformed by terror, and must not be seen to know them.</summary><p class="sum">A wild, white-haired man bursts down the stairs, beating his way through the crowd, and flees into the street; the student calls out the watcher's name and is dragged back.</p></details><details><summary><b>223</b> · <i>A Watcher by the Dead</i> — Someone whose prank went wrong looks on while a stranger declares a friend dead, and cannot say a word.</summary><p class="sum">Upstairs, a doctor examines the body on the table, face contorted and frothing, pronounces it six hours dead, and calls for the coroner.</p></details><details><summary><b>226</b> · <i>A Watcher by the Dead</i> — Someone whose cruel joke killed a person was driven mad by it, and blames the friends who left them to it.</summary><p class="sum">He says he rose from the table to frighten the watcher, who died of fright; he changed clothes with the body and was never let out. He is now mad, and the two are gamblers.</p></details><details><summary><b>227</b> · <i>The Man and the Snake</i> — An old superstition claims that some dangers draw their victims toward them against their own will, however they resist.</summary><p class="sum">An epigraph from an old book of marvels claims that a serpent's eye has a magnetic power that draws its victim forward against his will to his death.</p></details><details><summary><b>229</b> · <i>The Man and the Snake</i> — Someone staying as a guest with a friend has taken little notice of the dangerous things kept under the same roof.</summary><p class="sum">The guest, a rich, athletic traveller, is staying with a scientist friend who keeps a wing full of reptiles, from which his wife and daughters are excluded.</p></details><details><summary><b>235</b> · <i>The Man and the Snake</i> — Someone dies of terror at a danger that was never real, killed by nothing but their own fear and pride.</summary><p class="sum">Terrible cries ring through the house; they find the guest dead with his face under the bed, and the scientist pulls out the snake. It is stuffed, with shoe buttons for eyes.</p></details><details><summary><b>236</b> · <i>A Holy Terror</i> — Someone arrives alone at a place everyone else abandoned long ago, with a private reason for coming back.</summary><p class="sum">A white-haired stranger arrives unnoticed at a mining camp that was deserted two years ago, after the man whose tall tales of gold drew thousands there was shot on the third day.</p></details><details><summary><b>237</b> · <i>A Holy Terror</i> — Someone looks over the wreckage of a place where thousands once pinned their hopes on a lie.</summary><p class="sum">The abandoned camp is a wreck of skeleton shanties, rotting flumes, torn ground, old boots and bottles.</p></details><details><summary><b>238</b> · <i>A Holy Terror</i> — Someone who has come a long way on a secret tip quietly stakes their claim before anyone else can.</summary><p class="sum">The stranger ignores the ruins, goes to a hill, searches among the ground until he finds what he seeks, and stakes out a mining claim according to the local law.</p></details><details><summary><b>239</b> · <i>A Holy Terror</i> — Someone stakes their fortune on digging up ground where the dead lie buried, and means to go through with it.</summary><p class="sum">The hill is the camp's cemetery, which grew as the camp shrank, complete with a hanging tree and a dangling rope; he has staked his claim among the densest graves.</p></details><details><summary><b>240</b> · <i>A Holy Terror</i> — Someone leaves the person they love to seek their fortune, sent off with a prediction that they will fail.</summary><p class="sum">Six years before, he left his fiancée in the East, who told him he never succeeded at anything and would not come back alive.</p></details><details><summary><b>246</b> · <i>A Holy Terror</i> — Someone alone at night with the dead notices something wrong about the burial that nobody ever explained.</summary><p class="sum">He sees that the coffin was buried upside down, the woman face downward.</p></details><details><summary><b>248</b> · <i>A Holy Terror</i> — Someone overwhelmed by dread goes numb to its cause and notices everything else, until something startles them back.</summary><p class="sum">His senses return oddly sharp but blind to the coffin; he notices the tree, the rope and the coyotes, smells something sickening, and a raven drops past his face.</p></details><details><summary><b>255</b> · <i>A Holy Terror</i> — Someone who abandoned a faithful partner long ago stumbles on proof of how they died, and it kills them.</summary><p class="sum">The millionaire dismisses a glittering rock as fool's gold; his wife, alone, pockets a wallet from an old coat and finds her own letters and photographs addressed to her former fiancé, and she is found dead, her scarred face white.</p></details><details><summary><b>258</b> · <i>The Suitable Surroundings</i> — Someone frightened out of their wits forces themselves closer to look, and a sudden noise sends everyone fleeing.</summary><p class="sum">Through the window he sees a man staring motionless at a table and believes him dead; he pushes his face into the window, an owl shrieks, the man leaps up and puts out the candle, and the boy flees. The previous morning, a writer finds a friend reading his ghost story on a streetcar.</p></details><details><summary><b>259</b> · <i>The Suitable Surroundings</i> — Someone takes offence that a friend enjoys their work casually, and starts to lecture them about it.</summary><p class="sum">The writer says his friend is ruining his own pleasure by reading a ghost story on a streetcar, likening it to hearing an opera in an office.</p></details><details><summary><b>260</b> · <i>The Suitable Surroundings</i> — A friend's small grievance swells into fury out of all proportion, and the other begins to wonder what is wrong.</summary><p class="sum">He insists that an author has a right to the reader's undivided attention, growing so vehement that the friend notices his pallor and burning eyes.</p></details><details><summary><b>261</b> · <i>The Suitable Surroundings</i> — Someone insists that others meet their exact conditions before their work can be fairly judged at all, and grows heated about it.</summary><p class="sum">He says a ghost story must be read alone, at night, by candlelight, if it is to produce the fear the author intends.</p></details><details><summary><b>265</b> · <i>The Suitable Surroundings</i> — Someone bound by a terrible old pledge to a dead friend feels obliged to follow them into death.</summary><p class="sum">The manuscript is the writer's declaration that he will kill himself at midnight on the anniversary of the day his friend, the house's former owner, killed himself in fulfilment of a vow between them.</p></details><details><summary><b>269</b> · <i>The Boarded Window</i> — Someone who came to a hard, lonely place full of hope with the person they loved is left there alone.</summary><p class="sum">He is found dead and buried beside his long-dead wife. Years earlier he had come west young and hopeful with a devoted wife who shared every hardship gladly.</p></details><details><summary><b>273</b> · <i>The Boarded Window</i> — Someone who gave up the person they loved for dead learns too late that they were alive and fighting for their life.</summary><p class="sum">Mad with terror he fires his rifle blindly and by the flash sees a panther dragging his wife toward the window; at dawn he finds her throat torn, her fists clenched and a piece of the animal's ear between her teeth. She had not been dead.</p></details><details><summary><b>276</b> · <i>A Lady from Redhorse</i> — Someone who feels unworthy of the person they love is sure their feelings showed, and that it drove them away.</summary><p class="sum">He calls late while her aunt is out; she is helpless and in love, conscious that she is only a rough mining heiress, and he leaves after a few moments.</p></details><details><summary><b>277</b> · <i>A Lady from Redhorse</i> — Someone now respectable keeps up an old friendship from their humble past, though it could expose where they came from.</summary><p class="sum">The gossip calls again; she likes him because they were childhood playmates in a mining camp, known by humble nicknames.</p></details><details><summary><b>278</b> · <i>A Lady from Redhorse</i> — Someone who rose to wealth remembers a poor childhood friend who stood up for them, and lost track of.</summary><p class="sum">She recalls a third, ragged playmate who scavenged waste rock to feed his mother and defended her; after her father struck it rich they parted, and she heard the boy was later killed.</p></details><details><summary><b>280</b> · <i>A Lady from Redhorse</i> — Someone who arranged a chance meeting with the person they love is so flustered that they make a fool of themselves.</summary><p class="sum">Having seen him from her window, she goes to the beach alone; he asks to sit or walk with her, and she stammers that she would be pleased to do anything.</p></details><details><summary><b>281</b> · <i>A Lady from Redhorse</i> — Someone longing to seem graceful before the person they love suffers a small humiliation, and pushes them away in shame.</summary><p class="sum">He helps her up and will not let go of her hand; her leg has gone to sleep and she sinks, he holds her coolly, and mortified she pushes free and falls in the sand.</p></details><details><summary><b>283</b> · <i>A Lady from Redhorse</i> — Someone discovers a friend quietly arranged their romance, including the mystery that drew them in.</summary><p class="sum">He survived the bullet and came at the gossip's suggestion; the gossip also invented the dark mystery to rouse her curiosity. She is engaged.</p></details><details><summary><b>286</b> · <i>The Eyes of the Panther</i> — Someone alone in the dark with a child crouches against the wall, knowing they are being watched.</summary><p class="sum">In a pitch-dark log cabin deep in the forest a woman crouches against the wall clutching a child, watched by something unseen.</p></details><details><summary><b>293</b> · <i>The Eyes of the Panther</i> — Someone reveals they were born out of a horror that marked them, and asks whether they can ever be like other people.</summary><p class="sum">The suitor does not understand; she explains she is the second child, born three months after that night at the cost of her mother's life, and asks whether such a person can be sane. He cannot bring himself to take her hand.</p></details><details><summary><b>295</b> · <i>The Eyes of the Panther</i> — Someone decides the person they love is mad, then sees something in the dark that makes them doubt their own reason.</summary><p class="sum">He recalls her solitary life and fear of the night and decides she is mad; when he tries to question her she says they cannot marry and flees into the dark woods, and he glimpses shining eyes and runs after her shouting a warning.</p></details></section>
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