They moved him a few yards distant in hopes that the change of scene might make him more sociable.  But he showed no more sign of life than a fossil would have shown.  So again they all waited.  And they waited and waited and waited.  They spoke in whispers and went on waiting.

But after a while this policy of watchful waiting became tiresome.  Apparently the turtle was ready to withstand this siege for years if necessary.  Disgustedly, one scout after another went away, and others came.  Tempting morsels of food were placed in front of the turtle, in a bee line with his head.

“Gee whiz, if he doesn’t care for food what does he care for?” Pee-wee observed, knowing the influence of food.

That settled it so far as he was concerned, and he went away, saying that the turtle was not human, or else that he was dead.  Others, more patient, stood about, waiting.  And all the famed ingenuity of scouts was exhausted to beguile or to drive the turtle out of his stronghold.  At one time as many as twenty scouts surrounded him, with sticks, with food, and Scouty, the camp dog, came down and danced around and made a great fuss and went away thoroughly disgusted.

The turtle was master of the situation.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE WANDERING MINSTREL

With one exception the most patient scout at Temple Camp was Westy Martin of the interesting Bridgeboro, New Jersey, Troop.  He could sit huddled up in a bush 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.