“Wait a minute, fellows,” replied Fenn, earnestly. “Don’t touch those turtles!”
“Why not?” asked Ned. “Are they poisonous?”
“No, but there’s something queer about so many being out in the woods in the middle of winter. It isn’t natural. There is something out of the ordinary, and we must see what it is.”
“Maybe they’re hunting for the one of their number who wears the diamond bracelet,” suggested Bart, with a laugh, for, in spite of the gravity of the loss, he could not forbear an occasional joke at Fenn’s rather odd theory.
“No, it isn’t that,” went on Fenn earnestly. “But I did have a notion that perhaps the turtles might have escaped from the queer man who wrote and offered to buy my collection—the man we suspect of stealing the bracelet.”
“Why he isn’t in this vicinity,” remarked Frank.
“You don’t know whether he is or not,” was Fenn’s answer. “This seems to be a good place for turtles, though I can’t understand why they should be out in cold weather. But perhaps there is some reason for it.”
There was, and a strange one, as the boys soon discovered.
“Anyhow, they’re here,” observed Ned, “and what are we going to do about it?”
“Don’t touch ’em, I want to see in what direction they are traveling,” called Fenn, who, as soon as he had placed in a safe place the turtle he had caught, came over to where his chums were contemplating the other two.