Gloria arrives at the Gracetown Boys’ Reformatory with Miz Lottie and is struck by how beautiful the campus looks despite the barbed wire and her strong sense that something terrible lies beneath the surface. Miz Lottie is too frightened to go inside because of the danger attached to Robert’s family name and Robert’s father’s conflicts with powerful white people, so they wait outside the gate and hope to see Robert before he is processed in.

While they wait, Gloria sees two tractors carrying boys into the grounds from field labor, first white boys and then a larger group of Black boys. She searches the Black boys’ faces for Robert and realizes with horror that the Reformatory works children like laborers instead of treating them as students. That vision deepens her fear of what is about to happen to her brother.

David Loehmann, the social worker who drove Robert, then stops so Robert can embrace Gloria. Loehmann gives a superficially reassuring explanation of the Reformatory’s routines, visiting hours, schooling, and work, but Gloria presses him about the court process and learns how little protection Robert had: no lawyer, no jury, and broad discretion left to Judge Morris. In Loehmann’s private thoughts, he suspects Robert’s sentence is tied to retaliation against Robert Stephens, Robert’s father, yet he refuses to get more involved because he fears for his own family.

When Gloria tells Loehmann that Robert acted only after Lyle McCormack grabbed her and harassed her, Loehmann expresses regret but still withholds real help, even refusing to give her his card. Gloria recognizes that he will not save Robert and promises her brother she will get him out. Miz Lottie and Loehmann both warn Robert to stay invisible and hide how smart he is, and after a painful farewell Robert returns to the car to enter the Reformatory as barking sounds carry from the woods.