And now behold, we are prepared to receive you; yea, and except you withdraw your purposes, behold, ye will pull down the wrath of that God whom you have rejected, upon you, even to your utter destruction; but as the Lord liveth, our armies shall come upon you, except ye withdraw, and ye shall soon be visited with death, for we will retain our cities and our lands; yea, and we will maintain our religion and the cause of our God. But behold, it supposeth me that I talk to you concerning these things in vain; or it supposeth me that thou art a child of hell; therefore I will close my epistle, by telling you that I will not exchange prisoners, save it be on conditions that ye will deliver up a man, and his wife, and his children, for one prisoner; if this be the case that ye will do it, I will exchange. And behold, if ye do not this, I will come against you with my armies; yea, even I will arm my women and my children, and I will come against you, and I will follow you even into your own land, which is the land of our first inheritance; yea, and it shall be blood for blood; yea, life for life; and I will give you battle, even until you are destroyed from off the face of the earth. Behold, I am in my anger, and also my people; ye have sought to murder us, and we have only sought to defend ourselves. But behold, if ye seek to destroy us more, we will seek to destroy you; yea, and we will seek our land of our first inheritance. Now I close my epistle. I am Moroni; I am a leader of the people of the Nephites.

Now it came to pass that Ammoron, when he had received this epistle, he was angry; and he wrote another epistle unto Moroni; and these are the words which he wrote, saying, I am Ammoron, the king of the Lamanites; I am the brother of Amalickiah, whom ye have murdered. Behold, I will avenge his blood upon you; yea, and I will come upon you with my [p. 399]