THE Saints at Nauvoo were now as sheep without a shepherd. They had never contemplated such a crisis as this. That their Prophet would be taken from them had not entered their minds, although in the closing days of his career he had frequently spoken of his fate if again he should fall into the hands of his enemies. On the twenty-second of June, five days preceding his death, at the conclusion of the consultation with several of Nauvoo's leading citizens, and at which time it was decided that the safest thing for himself and Hyrum to do was to go West, he remarks in his journal: "I told Stephen Markham that if I and Hyrum were ever taken again we should be massacred, or I was not a Prophet of God." When the cowardly appeal made to him by false friends to return to Nauvoo, after he had crossed the Mississippi on his way to the West, was under consideration by himself and a few friends, he said to his brother, Hyrum Smith: "Brother Hyrum, you are the oldest, what shall we do?" Hyrum replied, "Let us go back and give ourselves up, and see the thing out." "If you go back," replied the Prophet, "I shall go with you, but we shall be butchered." Then again, after it was determined to adopt the course suggested by Hyrum, and the party was on the way to the river where they were to take boats for the Nauvoo side, the Prophet lingered behind the rest of the party talking with O. P. Rockwell. Those in advance shouted to them to come on. Joseph replied, "It is no use to hurry, for we are going back to be slaughtered." On arriving at Nauvoo, Hyrum, too, seemed to have been impressed with a sense of their approaching fate, for on the morning of the twenty-fourth of June, when the first start was made for Carthage, he read the following significant passage in the Book of Mormon, and turned down the leaf upon it: And it came to pass that I prayed unto the Lord that he would give unto the Gentiles grace, that they might have charity. And it came to pass that the Lord said unto me, if they have not charity it mattereth not unto you, thou hast been faithful; wherefore thy garments are clean. And because thou hast seen thy weakness, thou shalt be made strong, even to the sitting down in the place which I have prepared in the mansions of my father. And now I * * * * bid farewell unto the Gentiles; yea and also unto my brethren whom I love, until we shall meet before the judgment seat of Christ, when all men shall know that my garments are not spotted with your blood. [1] I have already quoted the pathetic words of the Prophet on meeting Captain Dunn's company of militia four miles out from Carthage, when he said: "I am going like a lamb to the slaughter; but I am calm as a summer's morning; I have a conscience void of offense towards God and towards all men. I shall die innocent, and it shall yet be said of me--He was murdered in cold blood."