Chapter Sixteen Summary

Tom comes home from the fields clearly bothered as he has realized that someone has been cutting timber from the outskirts of their land. After deliberating and discussing every possible reason why the wood might be missing, the family realizes that it is the Johnson family, who owns the land on the other side of the mountain, that has been pushing the line between their properties. When the men meet each other, Tom and Pa are horrified to see that Thurman and his boys have pulled out all the property stakes marking where the Peace family's land ends and the Johnson's begins. They know it will be much harder to prove that the land was theirs first. When she hears this, Ginny becomes dead-set on hiring a lawyer, at any cost, to preserve her family's land. Even though she is nervous...