hilst her recovered
husband hung between life and death. The detective also touched warily
upon the destruction of East Utah by Grenville and his friends some
years before, palliating their conduct there, by pointing out how very
necessary it had seemed to them to rescue Miss Winfield and her father
from their captors. To Kenyon's surprise, however, the old Mormon
frankly told him that Grenville had in this case, also, only anticipated
the intentions of the Holy Three in Utah itself, where they had
absolutely enrolled an army of the Saints to eat up the whole of this
rebellious African community as soon as they could find out the precise
whereabouts of East Utah--a task which had, however, proved too
difficult for them; and Zero's idea had been to found a colony of his
own, supported by the abominable traffic in slaves, and, by drawing into
it (under the name of Mormonism) all the cut-throats and scoundrels he
could lay hands on, to make the community much too strong for even the
Saints to overcome him or prevail against him, and eventually no doubt,
by exercising the power of the enormous wealth which he had wrung from
suffering flesh and blood, to usurp the supreme authority in Salt Lake
City itself.

Far into the night this curious pair sat talking of matters vitally
interesting to both, and though the old Prophet would not absolutely
commit himself to any promise regarding Kenyon's friends, he willingly
undertook to do his best for them, adding that, so far as he was
concerned, he rather liked them all, and should be glad to do the
detective a good turn by setting them all free, but that there were many
matters of policy to be considered by himself and his colleagues ere
they could see their way to any definite decision upon this head.

In the morning, when Grenville and Kenyon were released from the room
which they had been allotted, next to that occupied by the still
unconscious Leigh and his anxious wife and child, they were surprised to
notice the unusual quiet which overhung the place, but soon found that
one of the old Mormon's earliest measures of policy had consisted in
starting off to the southward the whole of the female population of
Equatoria at dawn, accompanied by their children, and convoyed by five
hundred of his own well-armed band.

Immediately breakfast was over, every soul remaining in the town was
summoned to another grand assembly, at which it was formally announced,
to the astonishment an