The night in the country came like a cloak so that everything outside disappeared. The absence of street lighting and a new moon, whose light could not penetrate the many trees, may have had something to do with this. From any window, the only thing Nate saw when he looked outside was a thick black blanket and the occasional glow of a firefly. At eight in the afternoon, he excused himself from his grandparents' company as they watched Secrets of the Dead in their living room. He had secrets of dead people to discover for himself. He went to the library and took the two boxes of books that he and the twins had started earlier into his room. He intended to check on them late at night and make up for their lack of progress. But soon his eyes were too downcast to scan the pages for the clues Will had said might be there. The search just got a lot more boring without the twins. Nate was lying on the bed, not bothering to undress. He fell asleep for just a short nap with every intention of waking up after a few minutes to do it again. Sometime during the night, he woke up to what sounded like loud footsteps pounding the ground at a strange cadence. A rhythm of boom pause boom pause boom came over and over as if someone were hopping on one foot. Strange, it seemed to come from near his bed. Nate sat up, still disoriented from his sleep. His lights were still on and he drowsily glanced around the room to find the cause of the noise. The movement from the ground caused a rush of adrenaline that put him on alert. He propped his feet up on the bed as if they were dangling in an alligator pit. If his room had been transformed into such a habitat, it wouldn't have shocked him any more than the view that actually greeted him from the bedroom floor. Books rose from the middle of the paper...lots of effort and, to Nate's surprise, a small roll of parchment fell to the floor. He didn't have the confidence to pick it up. It must be old, and Will had already warned him about the delicacy of old parchment. Suppose it falls apart in his hand and it turns out to be something really important. But it was too early to call Will for advice, and he wasn't going to let this lie on the floor. He picked it up and gently unrolled it. In his hands he held a note large enough to find a hiding place. Would that answer all his questions about the farm? Nate returned to bed. He laid the paper flat, then placed his pocket knife on the top end of the parchment to keep it from rolling up again and gently kept his finger on the bottom edge. He read the note once, then read it much more slowly a second time. The note definitely meant something, but he didn't know what..