"There is a discretionary power resting in my hands, which I shall try to exercise for a season. I did not say that you must go now, but you must not think of stopping here another season, or of putting in crops; for the moment you do the CITIZENS WILL BE UPON YOU. I am determined to see the Governor's orders fulfilled, but shall not come upon you immediately. Do not think that I shall act as I have done any more; but if I have to come again because the treaty which you have made is not complied with, you need not expect any mercy, but extermination; for I am determined that the Governor's order shall be executed. "As for your leaders, do not think, do not imagine for a moment, do not let it enter your mind that they will be delivered, or that you will see their faces again, for their fare is fixed, their die is cast, their doom is sealed. "I am sorry, gentlemen, to see so great a number of apparently intelligent men found in the situation that you are. And, oh! that I could invoke the Spirit of the unknown God to rest upon you, and deliver you from that awful chain of superstition, and liberate you from those fetters of fanaticism with which you are bound. I would advise you to scatter abroad and never again organize with bishops, presidents, etc., lest you excite the jealousies of the people, and subject yourselves to the same calamities that have now come upon you. "You have always been the aggressors; you have brought upon yourselves these difficulties by being disaffected, and not being subject to rule; and my advice is, that you become as other citizens, lest by a recurrence of these events you bring upon yourselves inevitable ruin." CHAPTER XXVI. ------------------------ The Prisoners:--Second Interview with General Clark:--Inquisition:-- Sickness of Elder Rigdon:--Colonel Price and Guards:--Their Conduct;--Rebuke by Joseph Smith:--Trial:--Similarity between King Herod and Governor Boggs:--Judge Austin A. King in Open Court Threatens a Wholesale Extermination of the "Mormons:"--Other Prisoners Obtained by Stratagem:--Advice of General Doniphan, Attorney for the Prisoners:--Decision:--Disposal of the Prisoners:--Flight of the Church to Illinois:--Conduct of the Outlaws:--My Family Visits me in Prison. I must not forget to state that when we arrived in Richmond as prisoners there were some fifty others, mostly heads of families, who had been marched from Caldwell on foot (distance 30 miles), and were now penned up in a cold, open, unfinished court house, in which situation they remained for some weeks, while their families were suffering severe privations.