At dawn, Rebecca wakes up her children, Hannah and Ezra, at the sound of approaching clicks of horse heels. She tells her children to hide under their shared bed as the intruders begin to pound at the door. The men threaten to smoke them out if Rebecca doesn’t let them in and she recalls hearing how they had whipped Sallie Moore and beat Martha White. 

Rebecca opens the door and a man in uniform on horseback introduces himself as Colonel Allen. She tells him she has two children and he commands her to bring them out before him. Rebecca tells the soldiers that her husband died in the war, but they do not believe her. The men search the barn and discover a ham and hay for making a fire. Rebecca asks to take the children inside and out of the cold and they accuse her of hiding goods and command them to stay outside.

The men discover letters Rebecca’s father-in-law wrote her after her husband died. When the colonel reads them, he commands his men to return everything to the house and to not burn down the barn. He tells the woman and children to go inside where he lights a fire in the fireplace and the colonel apologizes for rifling through their belongings. Rebecca tells him to carry on with their destruction in order to maintain the secrets told in the letters about which side of the war her husband fought on. The colonel agrees to kill three chickens and take the ham but refuses to burn the barn. So, Rebecca sets fire to the barn herself and burns the letters in the process. 

As she burns her own property, she imagines how the community will soon come together in the wake of the tragedy and she will continue to be seen as one of them and not as an imposter, as she truly is. She delights in the fact that Ira Wilkey will call her her neighbor and say that they are in this together.