It sounds like an episode from the version of _The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts_ published as _The Mysterious Stranger_ in 1916 but now generally called _The Chronicle of Young Satan_, in which Philip Traum (the Stranger) gives Theodor and Nikiolaus the power to create creatures (birds, small people) from mud and then to destroy the people when they begin behaving like full-scale human beings. John H. Davis, Ph.D. English Division Chowan University Murfreesboro, NC