Mid-way through the story, Jonathan and his children are awoken one night by a knocking at their door. The knocking is "so loud and imperious that the rickety old door could have fallen down." When Jonathan asks who is at the door, a voice replies with, "Na tief-man and him people." Hearing that there are thieves at their door, Jonathan's wife raises the alarm. She calls out to their neighbors to help them but there is no response. There is only a brief silence, in which Jonathan thinks that perhaps the thieves have been scared away.

However, the men at the door remain where they are, and it soon becomes clear that the leader has "at least five other(s)" with him. Realizing how many men there are at their door, Jonathan and his family become "paralysed with terror." The leader tells Jonathan that he wants "one hundred pounds," and that otherwise he and his men will break into the house with their guns. Jonathan then tells the leader that he only has twenty pounds, and the leader says, much to the dismay of his companions, that he will accept the twenty pounds.

At this point, the story jumps forward to the next morning. Jonathan's neighbors are "assembled to commiserate with him," and he is already at work "strapping his five-gallon demijohn to his bicycle carrier." His wife, meanwhile, is also working, "turning over akara balls in a wide clay bowl of boiling oil." Jonathan very stoically tells his neighbors that he "count(s)" the theft "as nothing." He tells them that he did not depend upon the money last week, implying that he does not depend upon it now. He also tells them that the loss of the money is a small loss to bear compared to "other things that went," or were lost "with the war."