the mud. And at
length he got the post fixed to suit him.

"Now get up," Russ told them, and Rose and Vi and Laddie stood up.

"That fixes it!" cried Laddie, in great excitement.

"It's all right if the calf doesn't struggle much while we are gone,"
said Russ doubtfully. "Which way did Mun Bun go?"

"He went on ahead, towards that Dripping Rock we started to see," said
Vi. "I saw him start, but I didn't think he was going to run away."

So the five Bunkers started off hurriedly along the log road through the
swamp, calling for Mun Bun as they went, and hoping he had not got into
real trouble. And he had not come to any harm, although he had wandered
some distance from the swampy pool where the calf was.

By and by Mun Bun heard them calling, and he called back. But he was so
busy that he did not return. They ran on along the road and at last
around a turn, and there was Mun Bun down on his hands and knees in the
middle of the road, so much interested in what he was looking at that
he did not at first give the others much of his attention.

"What are you doing, Mun Bun?" cried Rose, first to reach the little
boy.

"Oh, what's that?" asked Vi, at once curious when she saw the object
before Mun Bun.

"I dess it's a box," said Mun Bun, looking over his shoulder. "But
sometimes it walks. I'm waiting to see it walk again."

"A walking box!" shouted Laddie. "I can make a riddle out of that, I
know. When is a box not a box at all?"

"When it's a turtle!" exclaimed Russ, beginning to laugh.

"No, no!" said Laddie. "That isn't the answer. When it walks. That is
the answer to _my_ riddle, Russ."

"That is an awfully funny looking turtle," Rose said. "See how high up
it is." None of them had ever seen a wood tortoise before, and the
box-like, horny shell was not like that of the little mud-turtles in
Rainbow River or the snapping turtle Laddie had found at Uncle Fred's.

The tortoise was so scared (for Mun Bun had been poking it with a
stick) that its legs and head were drawn into the shell and it refused
to move. Russ did not know but that the tortoise would bite, so he said
they had all better go back to the calf. Mun Bun did not like to give up
his new-found treasure, but he went back, clinging to Rose's hand and
looking back at the tortoise as long as he could see it.

When they came to the place where the calf had been stuck in the mud
there was Tad Munson and with him a man. The man had already dragged the