of the creatures when from time to time they had been
brought singly into the workshop that their creator might
mitigate the wrong he had done by training the poor minds
with which he had endowed them to reason intelligently.

A few were hopeless imbeciles, unable to comprehend
more than the rudimentary requirements of filling their
bellies when food was placed before them; yet even
these were endowed with superhuman strength; and when
aroused battled the more fiercely for the very reason
of their brainlessness. Others, like Number Twelve,
were of a higher order of intelligence. They spoke
English, and, after a fashion, reasoned in a crude sort
of way. These were by far the most dangerous, for as
the power of comparison is the fundamental principle of
reasoning, so they were able to compare their lot with
that of the few other men they had seen, and with the
help of von Horn to partially appreciate the horrible
wrong that had been done them.

Von Horn, too, had let them know the identity of their
creator, and thus implanted in their malformed brains
the insidious poison of revenge. Envy and jealousy
were there as well, and hatred of all beings other
than themselves. They envied the ease and comparative
beauty of the old professor and his assistant, and
hated the latter for the cruelty of the bull whip and
the constant menace of the ever ready revolver; and so
as they were to them the representatives of the great
human world of which they could never be a part, their