The next morning, Bonnie leads Lena to the gristmill, carrying Ella piggyback along difficult trails while Lena struggles to keep pace. Bonnie shows her a wildflower field where Granny Creed gathers medicinal plants and describes various folk remedies. They visit a secret clearing where Bonnie and Jack Henry have hung bottles and cans to make music. After playing there, Bonnie makes Lena promise to keep the clearing secret.

On the road, they hear an approaching wagon and hide. When Bonnie recognizes the driver as Virgil, an old friend of Silas and a fellow war veteran, they come out. Virgil warns them that Widow Spinney is on the bridge ahead and tells Lena that Silas lost his wife and four children and has not been the same since. After he leaves to deliver moonshine, Bonnie tells Lena that Silas dislikes Virgil’s business because it draws the sheriff’s attention. Later, when Lena asks about what Virgil said, Bonnie explains that Georgie and Matilda Grace died of smallpox, Jeramiah drowned, and the baby girl was stillborn and unnamed.

Approaching Sugar Gulch Bridge, they descend to cross the creek below to avoid the Widow Spinney. Bonnie says the widow’s husband and baby are dead and that she sometimes claims other children are hers. As they cross the stepping stones, Lena looks up and sees the Widow Spinney staring down at them from the bridge.

At the gristmill, Lena and Bonnie meet the owner, Mr. Early, and three local women: Nellie McCauley, Betty Lee Blanchard, and Sandy Craig. Bonnie introduces Lena as Silas’s cousin from Germany. Lena tells the women that the man she was to marry died before the wedding. While waiting for cornmeal, Lena overhears the women discussing George Pollock and Sheriff Dixon and learns that the sheriff recently took the Corbin boy for evaluation.

A car arrives carrying Arthur Rothstein, a photographer commissioned by the Historical Section of the Resettlement Administration, and Miriam Sizer, a summer schoolteacher who says she does research for psychologist Mandel Sherman and writer Thomas Henry. After Sizer calls the mountain people backward and ignorant, Rothstein asks to photograph the mill and the families. He positions the adults and children near the woodshed, cabin, and pig shed, instructs them not to smile, tells them to look sad, removes their shoes, and directs some of the children, including Bonnie, to smear mud on their faces.

A log wagon arrives with Silas aboard. He confronts Rothstein, accusing him of taking photographs for government people working with George Pollock. The children and women say Rothstein staged the photographs. Silas orders Rothstein and Sizer to leave. After they depart, some of the women worry about Rothstein’s visit to the Corbin family and the sheriff taking their son. Bonnie says she has caused enough trouble that day and carries the heavy cornmeal sack home herself.

That evening, Silas arrives home still angry. He sends Bonnie and Ella upstairs so he can speak with Lena alone. When Lena accepts responsibility for allowing Bonnie to be photographed, Silas warns that if she ever lets strangers near his children again, she will have to leave. Lena tells him that Bonnie and Jack Henry are not “feebleminded” (118), describing Bonnie as intelligent and Jack Henry as kind and clever. She says Bonnie acts strong but is afraid and sad, and that Jack Henry is trying to be a man like his father but is still a child. She tells Silas the children want to be loved and not treated like a problem.

Silas says the state plans to turn thousands of acres in the mountains into a park and has been sending researchers to study the residents. He says officials are describing mountain families as backward, inbred, and uneducated, and using that to justify removing them. Because his family never filed a deed, the state considers him a squatter and will not compensate him, even though his family has lived on the land since the 1800s. He says one neighbor was offered $2 for his property. When Lena asks why the state is taking children, Silas says he does not know but suggests they may be trying to reduce the number of people they must force off the mountain or believe the families would be better off with fewer children.

He confirms that Sheriff Dixon has taken children from the Corbin, Bale, Beck, and Jenkins families, including a boy described as slow and a girl born missing an arm, and says Roy Jenkins was nearly lynched trying to stop them. Silas says his wife and other children are buried on the land and declares that anyone who tries to take his property or his children will have to kill him first.

The next morning, Lena remains alert for strangers while working on the farm. The mail wagon arrives with a letter for Silas and an advertisement, but nothing for Lena. Later that afternoon, Bonnie runs back to the house in alarm after discovering a woman in the barn speaking to Jack Henry. Lena rushes there with Ella, and they confront the stranger.

The woman identifies herself as Penelope Rodgers, a student from Sweet Briar College working with Professor Ivan McDougle and Arthur Estabrook of the Eugenics Records Office. She says she is researching mountain families and refers to a “lost tribe” (173), describing certain residents as racially mixed and mentally defective. She begins asking questions about the household, including how many children live there, their health, their mother, and their family background. Bonnie and Jack Henry repeatedly tell her to leave, but Penelope continues questioning them.

Lena answers some questions in an effort to end the encounter. She states that the children’s mother died in childbirth and that she was born in Italy and raised in Germany. Penelope questions Lena about her race, mentions the Racial Integrity Act, and asks whether she is married. When Lena says she is not married but is living on the property, Penelope accuses her of living in sin. After Bonnie says Lena is family, Penelope suggests incest and questions Ella’s paternity. She says that if Ella was born out of wedlock or through incest, she may have abnormalities and states that someone will need to come take her for evaluation. She adds that Lena may also need to be evaluated.

When Lena refuses to answer further and orders her to leave, Penelope hesitates. Jack Henry raises a pitchfork and threatens her, and Bonnie also demands that she get out. Penelope leaves the barn and flees to her vehicle. After she is gone, Lena apologizes for speaking to her. Bonnie rebukes her and storms away, while Jack Henry tells Lena not to worry. Lena fears that Penelope may send someone to take Ella.

By late July, nearly two months after Lena’s arrival, she and Bonnie resume working together in the garden, and Bonnie gives Lena an embroidered handkerchief, signaling that their earlier conflict has eased. Lena, Bonnie, and Jack Henry agree not to tell Silas about Penelope’s visit. Lena continues to wait for a letter from Germany, but none arrives, and she remains watchful for strangers.

On a hot afternoon, Lena, Bonnie, and Jack Henry cool off in the stream. When Lena notices a vehicle approaching on the road, they immediately run to the shed. Jack Henry opens a hidden trapdoor in the floor, and they descend into a small cellar beneath the shed. He secures the door from below, covering it with a rug. They wait in the dark, cold space. Footsteps sound above, and someone tries to open the trapdoor. Jack Henry holds it shut. When they hear Silas calling their names, they come out. Silas explains that Virgil told him someone had taken the Widow Spinney from the bridge, so he returned home to check on them. He tells them they did well to hide.

The next day, the mail wagon delivers a letter addressed to Lena from Frau Carla Müller in Germany. The letter states that Lena’s mother died on the return voyage to Germany and was buried in Beckingen, and that Enzo has been hospitalized with typhus. After reading the letter, Lena collapses to the ground and weeps. She tells Bonnie that her mother has died and that her brother is ill. Bonnie stays with her as Lena holds Ella, and the two remain together in the garden.

In the days after learning of her mother’s death, Lena continues cooking, cleaning, gardening, and caring for Ella while struggling with waves of grief and panic. She writes immediately to Frau Müller, thanking her and asking for news of Enzo. For several weeks, no letter arrives. Then, nearly four weeks later, Lena receives a letter from Enzo.

In his letter, Enzo describes finding their mother unresponsive on the ship and explains that by the time he located a doctor, she was already gone. He tells Lena that their mother made him promise to pass along her love and to urge Lena to stay strong and be happy. Enzo writes that he survived typhus, has been released from the hospital, and is staying with Frau Müller while recovering. He hopes to find work in Berlin and save money for passage back to America, and he asks Lena to send money if she is able so that he can repay Frau Müller’s kindness.

Overcome with relief that her brother is alive, Lena runs toward the house to share the news with Bonnie and Ella. Watching Bonnie spin Ella in the yard, Lena feels renewed hope. She realizes she no longer wishes to leave Wolfe Hollow. She understands that she and Ella have become deeply attached to Bonnie and Jack Henry and that their lives are now intertwined. She prays that Silas will succeed in protecting the land so they can all remain together in the Blue Ridge Mountains.