I felt better when I got into the Wide Blue Water and was
swimming toward home. It took me all night to get there, and the folks
were so worried they couldn't sleep, for some one had seen Old Man
Moccasin out in the middle of the water, chasing something, during the
afternoon.

"Well, of course I told everything that had happened, and almost
everybody in the Wide Blue Water came to hear about it, and they told it
to others, and Old Man Moccasin heard so much about how Mr. Eagle had
fooled him, and how I had fooled Mr. Eagle, that he moved to another
drift, farther down, and probably lives there still. And Mr. Eagle heard
so much about the way he tried to teach me to fly that he made up a
story of his own and flew in all directions, telling it; and that is the
story most people know about to-day and the one that Mr. Man put into
his books. But it isn't true, and I can prove it."

Mr. Turtle got up and turned around toward the Hollow Tree people. He
had his coat off, and he reached back and pointed to a place about in
the center of his shell.

"Feel right there," he said, which Mr. Rabbit did, and said:

"Why, there's quite a lump there. It hardly shows, but you can feel it
plainly."

[Illustration: "YES," SAID MR. TURTLE, "THAT'S WHERE I STRUCK"]

"Yes," said Mr. Turtle, "that's where I struck. It was quite sore for a
good while. There was a lump there, at first, as big as an egg. It
flattened a good deal afterward, but it never quite went away. Feel how
smooth it is. It kept just about as it was when it happened."

Then all those other Deep Woods people came up and felt of the queer
lump on Mr. Turtle's back, and said how perfectly that proved everything
and how Mr. Turtle always could prove things, and they noticed the
inscription about the old race with Mr. Hare, and said in some ways Mr.
Turtle was about the most wonderful person anywhere and they were
certainly proud to be his friends.

Then Mr. Turtle said they might all sit there and talk about it a
little, while he went in to cook the fish and make a pan of biscuits and
a nice salad for dinner.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] "Mr. Turtle's Thunder Story" in _The Hollow Tree and Deep Woods
Book_.

THE DEEP WOODS ELOPEMENT

MR. 'POSSUM TELLS ABOUT AUNT MELISSY AND UNCLE SILAS AND THE ROMANCE OF
MINTY GLENWOOD

ONE night in the Hollow Tree, when the 'Coon and 'Possum and the Old
Black Crow had finished their supper and were sitting around the fire,
smokin