“I can if I will, and will if I can! 
  I’m sure to get there if I follow this plan.”

Half-way up the bank Spotty lost his balance, and the house he was carrying just tipped him right over backward, and down he rolled to the place he had started from.

“I needed to cool off,” said Spotty to himself and slid into a little pool of water.  Then he tried the bank again, and just as before he slipped back two steps for every three he went up.  But he shut his mouth tight and kept at it, and by and by he was up to the place from which he had tumbled.  There he stopped to get his breath.

 “I can if I will, and will if I can! 
  I’m sure to get there if I follow this plan,”

said he and started on again.  Twice more he tumbled clear down to the place he had started from, but each time he laughed at himself and tried again.  And at last he reached the top of the bank.

“I said I could if I would, and I would if I could, and I have!” he cried.

Then he hurried to see what was behind the strange wall.  What do you think it was?  Why, a pond!  Yes, Sir, there was a pond right in the middle of the Green Forest!  Trees were coming up right out of the middle of it, but it was a sure enough pond.  Spotty found it harder work to believe his own eyes now than when he had first seen the strange wall across the Laughing Brook.

“Why, why, why, what does it mean?” exclaimed Spotty the Turtle.

“That’s what I want to know!” cried Billy Mink, who came hurrying up just then.

CHAPTER XVII:  Who Had Made The Strange Pond?

Who had made the strange pond?  That is what Spotty the Turtle wanted to know.  That is what Billy Mink wanted to know.  So did Little Joe Otter and Jerry Muskrat and Grandfather Frog, when they arrived.  So did Ol’ Mistah Buzzard, looking down from the blue, blue sky.  It was very strange, very strange indeed!  Never had there been a pond in that part of the Green Forest before, not even in the days when Sister South Wind melted the snow so fast that the Laughing Brook ran over its banks and the Smiling Pool grew twice as large as it ought to be.

Of course some one had made it.  Spotty the Turtle had known that as soon as he had seen the strange pond.  All in a flash he had understood what that wall of logs and brush and mud across the Laughing Brook was for.  It was to stop the water from running down the Laughing Brook.  And of course, if the water couldn’t keep on running and laughing on its way to the Smiling Pool, it would just stand still and grow and grow into a pond.  Of course!  There was nothing else for it to do.  Spotty felt very proud when he had thought that out all by himself.

“This wall we are sitting on has made the pond,” said Spotty the Turtle, after a long time in which no one had spoken.

“You don’t say so!” said Billy Mink.  “How ever, ever, did you guess it?  Are you sure, quite sure that the pond didn’t make the wall?”