- Major bummer alert: Tom doesn't get the title to the Breen property.
- Billy-Bob tells Tom that someone has bought the barn before it could go up for auction for the taxes. He says Ab Lambert, the cousin of the banker Oscar Lambert, bought the property, but he suspects that he bought it for someone else because he can't see why Ab would want the property.
- But Billy-Bob's got an idea: he can find out who Ab bought the land for, and Tom can make an offer to that person for the barn. Billy-Bob says that Tom is better off without the land anyway and that all he really wants is the barn.
- Tom feels like his dreams are crumbling around him. Maybe that's a bit dramatic, but he's pretty disappointed.
- Tom's mother sees he is upset. Tom realizes he hasn't told his mother about his plan to buy the barn. Kind of surprising, considering he's been pretty much obsessed with it for years now. But it's because he'd wanted to surprise them when it was officially his.
- Polly Ann sympathizes with him, but tells him not to linger on might-have-beens.
- Polly Ann repeats the idea that he might still be able to get the barn from whomever bought the property. Tom laments that it probably won't be as cheap as if he had gotten it for the price of taxes, but she says she has the feeling "you're going to buy it all the same" (33).
- Tom's not so sure, but it's sort of comforting, at least.