On a day during the Civil War, men pound loudly on Rebecca’s door. She instructs her two children to hide under the bed. These men had killed, robbed, and beaten others in the town before. Rebecca knows what they are capable of. They threaten to burn down Rebecca’s house if she does not open the door. Rebecca opens the doors and sees two men on horses. They are officers in the Confederacy. A man on a horse identifies himself as Colonel Allen of the North Carolina Sixty-Fourth Division. He instructs her to bring her children outside. Rebecca tells her children to do what they say. The officers want to know where Rebecca’s man is. They believe he is part of the group that is trying to kill them. Rebecca, however, says that he has been dead for two years. Rebecca believes these men are soldiers turned thieves. The men search Rebecca’s property and take some of her things.

Rebecca sees smoke from over the horizon and assumes the confederates had come in the night. The soldiers make the children go out in the cold. Rebecca thinks back to how her father-in-law had promised to come back for them after giving Rebecca the news of her dead husband. The soldiers find personal letters written from Aaron, Rebeca’s late husband, to Rebecca. After the Colonel reads the letters, he instructs his men to put everything back and orders the children inside. Colonel Allen goes inside with Rebecca. He expresses that his own children died and that his men were to blame for it. He shares that the soldiers terrorized his family.

Another soldier comes in and tells Colonel Allen that his orders have been carried out. He apologizes to Rebecca and offers her more supplies. He explains that he did not know that her husband was a respected soldier himself. Rebecca says they ought to burn her barn and take her animals so that her neighbors do not find out that her husband died for the Confederate cause. The soldiers will not burn her barn but take her animals. Colonel Allen also tells her to burn the letters. The soldiers leave.

Rebecca burns down the barn that her neighbors help her build as the soldiers would not do it. She did not want her union-supporting neighbors to feel she was favored by the confederacy.

She thinks about how all the neighbors will come together to survive the winter.