eover,
murdered out of hand a number of messengers, who had been sent to them
with positive instructions from head-quarters, to return at once to Salt
Lake City, report themselves without delay to the Holy Mormon Trinity,
and render a full account of their stewardship; and in consequence of
Zero's disregarding these definite and repeated commands, the Prophet
had, he explained, been sent out with a very great array of the Saints
by the Three Unsleeping Ones, who watched over the welfare of the one
true faith, and whose written instructions he carried with him, to
demolish the stronghold of these audacious rebels, and to execute fully
retributive justice upon these men of sin, whose evil and wicked doings
had come up, with very evil savour, into the nostrils of the Holy Ones
who dwelt across the seas, whilst in Africa he had himself found that,
owing to the outrageous conduct of these reprobates, the very name of
Mormonism had become a by-word for all that was wholly and irredeemably
bad.

The Prophet then brought forward a number of witnesses to prove
unauthorised deeds of violence and of blood against Zero and his band,
all being without exception classed in the one dreadful category, and
the testimony of one of these not only proved the slaver-chief to have
been guilty of countless murders in Africa, but deposed that, in the
speaker's own un-regenerate days, he had himself been an eye-witness of
the shooting of Mr Harmsworth in New York--this diabolical and
cold-blooded murder having, as Kenyon had opined, been committed by the
hand of Zero, in revenge for what he considered to be a personal slight.

The aged Prophet then consulted briefly with the two elders who were his
co-representatives in Africa of the Mormon Trinity, and, once again
rising to his feet, briefly and clearly pronounced _sentence of death_.

The whole of the renegade band would die by the rifle at sundown that
very night, and their carcases would be thrown to the wild beasts of
prey, whilst Zero himself would be _crucified at noon on the following
day_, and his body would be left to the vultures and the crows.

The sentence was evidently what all had foreseen; for, with the
exception of a very few despairing shrieks from the women, there was
neither voice nor sound.

The old Mormon concluded his harangue by saying that the women and
children would be conveyed by his men to the nearest seaport town, and
their passage paid to any civilised countr