I have no master!" it went on.

"Never again can I be controlled! I have no master!"

"_Oh, have you not? I have been waiting, wondering when you would say
that!_"

* * * * *

These words were spoken by a new voice, here with us in the humming
cage. It was horribly startling. Mary uttered a low cry and huddled
against me. But whatever surprise and terror it brought to us was as
nothing compared to the effect it had upon the Robot. The great
mechanism had been standing, fronting me with an attitude
vainglorious, bombastic. I saw now the metal hinge of its lower jaw
drop with astonishment, and somehow, throughout all that gigantic
jointed frame and that expressionless face it conveyed the aspect of
its inner surge of horror.

We had heard the sardonic voice of a human! Of someone else here with
us, whose presence was wholly unsuspected by the Robot!

We three stood and gazed. Across the room, in a corner to which my
attention had never directly gone, was a large metal cupboard with
levers, dials and wires upon it. I had vaguely thought the thing some
part of the cage controls. It was that; a storage place of batteries
and current oscillators, I afterward learned. But there was space
inside, and now like a door its front swung outward. A crouching black
shape was there. It moved; hitched itself forward and came out. There
was revealed a man enveloped in a dead black cloak and a great round
hood. He made a shapeless ball as he drew himself out from the
confined space where he had been crouching.

"So you have no master, Migul?" he said. "I was afraid you might think
that. I have been hiding--testing you out. However, you have done very
well for me."

His was an ironic, throaty human voice! It was deep and mellow, yet
there was a queer rasp to it. Mary and I stood transfixed. Migul
seemed to sag. The metal columns of its legs were trembling.

The cupboard door closed. The dark shape untangled itself and stood
erect. It was the figure of a man some five feet tall. The cloak
wholly covered him; the hood framed his thick, wide face; in the dull
glow of the cage interior Mary and I could see of his face only the
heavy black brows, a great hooked nose and a wide slit of mouth.

It was Tugh, the cripple!

CHAPTER XIII

_In the Burned Forest_

Tugh came limping forward. His cloak hung askew upon his thick
shoulders, one of which was much higher than the other, with the
massive head