I have slept little during the past seventy-two hours, but during the time that I did, I repeatedly experienced a most extraordinary dream. It is imperative that I record the images before they fade. Was the dream a revelation from God, the fruit of an exhausted mind, or a torment bestowed upon me by the Lord's Arch-Enemy working to do wrong within my soul?
     When the dream began, I stood at the edge of a bright, frosty white glen encompassed by tall, black-barked trees. Hearing a woman's terrified scream, my eyes were drawn to a young Indian who stumbled and fell into a thick blanket of snow no more than fifty feet away. She tried to climb to her feet, but fell a second time with a cry of pain--she had twisted her ankle and knee. Looking back, her face became wild with fear. I followed her trail through the snow to the edge of the glen.
     A brawny frontiersman broke furiously through the line of trees and brush, his beaver-pelt cloak flapping off his shoulders, a menacing sword in one hand. A triumphant whoop exploded raggedly from his lips as his eyes locked on his struggling prey.
     The woman screamed again. There would be no escape. She pulled a small knife from a sheath on her hip and rolled to face her attacker. Her defense was in vain. The frontiersman slapped the knife from her hand with the end of his sword. The woman tried to back away. The frontiersman reached down and grabbed her long black hair, yanking her head back. She grabbed his wrist with both of her hands. A cruel smile formed on his face as his eyes dropped to the woman's writhing torso--and the huge bulge beneath her loose fitting garment. The Indian woman was heavy with child!
     I still flinch at the revelation of that dire moment. I still recoil at the discovery that the frontiersman was my grandfather, Will MacDonald!
     "No, Grandpa! No!" I tried to scream, but no words would come out of my mouth.
     I broke from the edge of the glen. I tried to reach him, to grab his arm, but deep snow had drifted about my legs and I could not move. So I watched, helplessly frozen in place, transfixed as Will raised his shining sword and mercilessly plunged it downward. I could not turn my eyes away as he completed his murderous deed, separating the unborn child from its mother and dropping it into a bank of snow. The expression on his face was one of supreme satisfaction. He stooped, wiped his sword clean on the woman's garment, then turned and disappeared into the forest.
     Feet and legs freed at last, I approached the dying woman. She moaned weakly, life draining swiftly through her open belly. Blood was everywhere, forming into rivulets that trickled toward me.
     I stopped and looked down at my feet. As I gasped for breath, my eyes beheld Tertullian's riddle, UNDE MALUM, drawn in red by an unseen hand!
     The words melted the snow and formed red rivulets flowing past me. I turned, only to discover that they had merged with other rivulets, widening into a stream.
     The setting changed instantly to a hot, summer day. Now I stood at the edge of an oddly familiar road bounded on one side by a deep ravine and by cotton fields on the other. I peered over the edge and my stomach turned sickeningly. The ravine was filled with rushing torrents of blood!
     A dull, crashing sound drew my attention upstream. Something large moved just beneath the rolling red surface. Moving toward me, it rammed into the sides of the ravine. My hands and legs trembled. I recognized the narrow road near Charleston. Another crash drew my eyes downward. In the ravine a wagon tumbled over and over in the turgid flow! Victoria's wagon! My heart was crushed, wrung by invisible hands. I collapsed to my knees.
     On the other side of the ravine, two men sat motionless on horseback. I recognized Beaumont's brawny frame at once; the dark-haired man beside him, with cold, hateful eyes and a scar on his left cheek, I had never seen before. The scene changed again.
     The ground about me shook violently. The men disappeared. The sides of the ravine peeled back, like a bloody open wound. The narrow flow widened into thunderous red rapids, spewing and kicking. The cotton fields lurched toward the sky, transforming into tall, rocky bluffs looming above me. I recognized them instantly. I was back in western Virginia near a second town named Harper's Ferry. And it was no longer Victoria's wagon that tumbled by, but a hangman's gallows. Slowly, inexorably, the rapids pushed the huge structure past me, rolling it end over end. The broken and blood-soaked body of John Brown was tangled in the rope and scaffolding, disappearing as the gallows plunged beneath the surface only to reappear moments later, like Melville's doomed Captain Ahab on the broad back of Moby Dick.
     The nausea returned, stabbing at my gut. I shut my eyes, knowing that the dream had yet to run its full course. Even as I did, the roaring and grinding stopped abruptly.
     My eyes popped open; my heart sank and all strength drained from my limbs. Whoever or whatever had taken me on this morbid journey had transformed the rapids into an exceedingly wide river, smooth like glass and impenetrably crimson. There were no sounds, not from the river, not from the grassy hills or groves of oak and maple behind me, nor in the air above. And as in each of the previous scenes, my location was painfully familiar. I knelt on an elevated bank of the Potomac River just south of Washington City, the stump of Washington's unfinished monument in view.
     As my gaze moved downstream, I spied an object in the center of the river. Compelled, I climbed wearily to my feet and stumbled forward along the edge of the riverbank on wobbly, unresponsive legs. As the object grew larger and clearer, my fear grew as well. The object was a man. He clung to a squarish wooden stump, pulling himself upward as the glistening scarlet river slowly rose about him.
     Somehow cued by my presence, the man turned his shoulders and head toward me. Grief impaled my heart. It was the old French priest, Father Gibault! And it was no ordinary stump that he clung to, but the crosspiece of a nearly submerged cross!
     How much grief can a man bear? Did I not nearly faint from despair?
     I must rest again.