eart was a chaos of conflicting emotions. His little world had
been wiped out. His creator--the man whom he thought his only friend
and benefactor--had suddenly turned against him. The beautiful
creature he worshipped was either lost or dead; Sing had said so. He
was nothing but a miserable THING. There was no place in the world for
him, and even should he again find Virginia Maxon, he had von Horn's
word for it that she would shrink from him and loathe him even more
than another.

With no plans and no hopes he walked aimlessly through the blinding
rain, oblivious of it and of the vivid lightning and deafening thunder.
The palisade at length brought him to a sudden stop. Mechanically he
squatted on his haunches with his back against it, and there, in the
midst of the fury of the storm he conquered the tempest that raged in
his own breast. The murder that rose again and again in his untaught
heart he forced back by thoughts of the sweet, pure face of the girl
whose image he had set up in the inner temple of his being, as a
gentle, guiding divinity.

"He made me without a soul," he repeated over and over again to
himself, "but I have found a soul--she shall be my soul. Von Horn
could not explain to me what a soul is. He does not know. None of
them knows. I am wiser than all the rest, for I have learned what a
soul is. Eyes cannot see it--fingers cannot feel it, but he who
possess it knows that it is there for it fills his whole breast with a
great, wonderful love and worship for something infinitely finer than
man's dull senses can gauge--something that guides him into paths far
above the plain of soulless beasts and bestial men.

"Let those who will say that I have no soul, for I am satisfied with
the soul I have found. It would never permit me to inflict on others
the terrible wrong that Professor Maxon has inflicted on me--yet he
never doubts his own possession of a soul. It would not allow me to
revel in the coarse brutalities of von Horn--and I am sure that von
Horn thinks he has a soul. And if the savage men who came tonight to
kill have souls, then I am glad that my soul is after my own
choosing--I would not care for one like theirs."

The sudden equatorial dawn found the man still musing. The storm had
ceased and as the daylight brought the surroundings to view Number
Thirteen became aware that he was not alone in the campong. All about
him lay the eleven terrible men whom he had driven from t