With life comes death, and one more of the Brown's children would meet an untimely death. Hope was threatened by an old nemesis of her past, the uncle of Jost who tried to rape her at Fort Paris; it was Jost who met his uncle's knife and he lost a lot of blood. It was an eventful time in their lives. Romance was in the air, JB and Anna; Jonas and Emme; in this time people wed early, but these romances seemed to have a lot of difficulty. Neik went out in a blizzard to try to help some elderly people, he was weak from a bad case of the measles and he fell in the snow. He turned the horses loose, hoping they would find their way back to the farm. Jost went out to find Neik, he knew how much he meant to Hope and he didn't think she could live without this particular son, or perhaps with the loss of another son. Jost went to find Neik and he stumbled over a body which was prone in the snow.