By nightfall, Vyry goes out to call Jim and Minna inside when “a strong arm [grabs] her and [claps] a big hand over her mouth” (322). She struggles. Then, the freedman comes and fends off her attacker, who “[disappears] in the bushes” (322). Before dawn the next day, Bob bangs on Vyry’s cabin door and asks her to come quick to the Big House. Lillian was alone in the house all night with her children. When Vyry goes inside of her bedroom, she sees that someone cut open Lillian’s feather bed and threw molasses all over the floor. Lillian is on the floor, lying “in the sticky mess of feathers with her head in a little pool of blood” (324). Seeing that she isn’t dead, Vyry tells Jim to go get the freedman and to have someone get a doctor. Vyry sees that Lillian was hit with a gun.

Old Doc arrives, flabbergasted by the mess, but says that the Crenshaw and Barrow houses were set afire and completely burned. He wonders what more the Union soldiers could want, now that the war is over and the slaves have been freed. He then declares that the honor of the Dutton house is now dead.