Mormon uses this incident to discuss how the Gadianton ideas returned to the Nephites, even after defeating the Gadiantons, after declaring them gone, only eight years earlier. Those who want to quiet the prophets enter into covenants to make that happen, and also to find a way to “destroy the governor, and to establish a king over the land.”
This has long been the most pernicious of Nephite apostasies. In this case, however, the apostates do not leave to join the Lamanites. They take over from within.
This is not the end of a chapter in the 1830 edition.