for an hour studying a bird. He could sit and fish
for hours without catching anything. But the turtle was too much for
him.

"We ought to name that guy Llewellyn," he commented, as he strolled
away; "that means _lightning_, according to some book or other. There
was an old Marathon racer a couple of million years ago named
Llewellyn."

"That's a good name for him," Tom admitted.

"You going to hang around, Slady?"

"I'm going to fight it out on these lines if it takes all summer," Tom
said.

Thus the two most patient, stubborn living things in all the world were
left alone together--the turtle and Tom Slade.

Tom sat on a rock and the turtle sat on the ground. Tom did not budge.
Neither did the turtle. The turtle was facing up toward the camp and
away from the lake. Tom rested his chin in his hands, studying the
initials on the turtle's shell. If they had been A. H. instead of T. H.
they would indeed have been the very initials of Master Anthony
Harrington, Jr. But a miss is as good as a mile, thought Tom, and T. H.
is no more like A. H. than it is like Z. Q.

This train of thought naturally recalled to his mind the letters he had
seen imprinted in the mud up in the woods. But those letters were H. T.
and there was therefore no connection between these three sets of
letters.

Tom knew well enough the habit of the Temple Camp scouts of carving
their initials everywhere. The rough bench where they waited for the
mail wagon to come along was covered with initials. And among them Tom
recalled a certain sprightly tenderfoot, Theodore Howell by name, who
had been at camp early that same season. Doubtless this artistic
triumph on the bulging back of Llewellyn was the handiwork of that same
tenderfoot.

And likely enough, too, those letters up in the woods were the initials
of Harry Thorne, still at camp. Tom would ask Harry about that. And at
the same time he would remind some of these carvers in wood and clay not
to leave any artistic memorials on the camp woodwork. It was part of
Tom's work to look after matters of that kind. About the only conclusion
he reached from these two disconnected sets of initials was that he
would have an eye out for specialists in carving....

But Tom's authority was as naught when it came to Llewellyn. The turtle
cared not for the young camp assistant. He sat upon the ground
motionless as a rock, apparently dead to the world.

Tom had now no more interest in the turtle than a kin