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 kind of sporting instinct not to be beaten.  He could sit upon the rock as long as his adversary could sit upon the ground.  In a moment of exasperation he had been upon the point of hurling the turtle into the lake, but had refrained, and now he was reconciled to a vigil which should last all night.

Llewellyn had met his match.

For fifty-seven minutes by his watch, Tom waited.  Then the tip end of
Llewellyn’s nose emerged slowly, cautiously, and remained stationary.

Eleven minutes of tense silence elapsed.

Then the tip end of Llewellyn’s nose emerged a trifle more, stopped, started again and lo, his whole head and neck were out, craned stiffly upward toward the camp.

Tom did not move a muscle, he hardly breathed.  Soon the turtle’s tail was sticking straight out and one forward claw was emerging slowly, doubtfully.

Silence.

Another claw emerged and the neck relaxed its posture of listening reconnoissance.  Then, presto, Llewellyn was waddling around like a lumbering old ferry boat and heading straight for the lake.  As he waddled along in a bee line something which Tom had once read came flashing into his mind, which was that no matter where a turtle is placed, be it in the middle of the Desert of Sahara, he will travel a bee line for the nearest water.

But his recollection of this was as nothing to Tom now, when he saw with mingled feelings of shame and excitement something which seemed to open a way to the most dramatic possibilities.

As the turtle entered the muddy area near the lake Tom realized, what he should have known before, that the tracks which Hervey Willetts had followed from the mountain and which Skinny had followed from the lake were the tracks of a turtle! The tracks of a turtle coming from a locality where it did not belong, straight for the still water which was its natural element.

With a quick inspiration Tom darted forward into the mud catching the turtle just as it was waddling into the water.  He did not know why he did this, it was just upon an impulse, and in making the sudden reach he all but lost his balance.  As it was he had to swing both arms to keep his feet, and as he did so the turtle fell upside down in the drier mud a few feet back from shore.  As Tom lifted it, there, imprinted in the mud were the letters H. T.