Twelve hours have passed since the close of my last entry.
     It is as if winter's icy breath has come early to this house, and no fire can warm the chill now set into our hearts. Tears hide behind every eye. Broken hearts are held together with the everyday motions of a busy fall morning.
     This morning, shortly after dawn, a rider approached the house. We thought him to be another Union supply officer seeking to purchase horses or perhaps cattle for beef. He was not here to purchase supplies, but to be the bearer of tragic news.
     John Ezra has been killed in battle.
     Our hearts went numb. After the sympathetic officer left, our stunned silence turned to tears. I comforted Elizabeth, holding her in my arms. The children gathered to us, clung to our legs, and cried, too.
     Breakfast was a plate of tasteless pancakes and eggs. Thomas Peter ventured outside to the barn where he could be alone in his grief. Elizabeth poked about the kitchen, cleaning the table and sweeping the floors, then retired to her room. Angelina sits on the corner of the hearth, quietly reading my journals, her eyes pools of sadness.
     I sit in the kitchen, alone, struggling to write these bitter words.
     O Lord, why John and not me? I have no purpose here! I research and reason; I seek to know the truth; I record my thoughts for posterity. To what end? Will my words ever reach anyone who might find meaning in them? I carry an old sword to remind me of the power of evil in men's hearts. I record tales of guillotines and hangmen's nooses, of a wiry old man shuffling like a serpent across the ground. Am I a madman or just a fool?
     I am drinking from Tecumseh's bitter spring once again. My wife was murdered, my brother has been killed. Where now is Your redemption? Your power? How many men will lay down their lives for this impotent vision of a just war?
     We cannot cleanse ourselves in its bloody flow! O, the futility of shedding our own blood!