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The two adversaries were only too glad to be allowed to rest, and believed to the end of their days that, after all, the tortoise was stronger than either of them.

A day or two later the young tortoise was taking a stroll, when he met a fox, and stopped to speak to him. ‘Let us try,’ said he in a careless manner, ‘which of us can lie buried in the ground during seven years.’

‘I shall be delighted,’ answered the fox, ‘only I would rather that you began.’

‘It is all the same to me,’ replied the tortoise; ‘if you come round this way to-morrow you will see that I have fulfilled my part of the bargain.’

So he looked about for a suitable place, and found a convenient hole at the foot of an orange tree. He crept into it, and the next morning the fox heaped up the earth round him, and promised to feed him every day with fresh fruit. The fox so far kept his word that each morning when the sun rose he appeared to ask how the tortoise was getting on. ‘Oh, very well; but I wish you would give me some fruit,’ replied he.

‘Alas! the fruit is not ripe enough yet for you to eat,’ answered the fox, who hoped that the tortoise would die of hunger long before the seven years were over.

‘Oh dear, oh dear! I am so hungry!’ cried the tortoise.

‘I am sure you must be; but it will be all right to-morrow,’ said the fox, trotting off, not knowing that the oranges dropped down the hollow trunk, straight into the tortoise’s hole, and that he had as many as he could possibly eat.

So the seven years went by; and when the tortoise came out of his hole he was as fat as ever.

Now it was the fox’s turn, and he chose his hole, and the tortoise heaped the earth round, promising to return every day or two with a nice young bird for his dinner. ‘Well, how are you getting on?’ he would ask cheerfully when he paid his visits.

‘Oh, all right; only I wish you had brought a bird with you,’ answered the fox.

‘I have been so unlucky, I have never been able to catch one,’ replied the tortoise. ‘However, I shall be more fortunate to- morrow, I am sure.’

But not many to-morrows after, when the tortoise arrived with his usual question: ‘Well, how are you getting on?’ he received no answer, for the fox was lying in his hole quite still, dead of hunger.

By this time the tortoise was grown up, and was looked up to throughout the forest as a person to be feared for his strength and wisdom. But he was not considered a very swift runner, until an adventure with a deer added to his fame.

One day, when he was basking in the sun, a stag passed by, and stopped for a little conversation. ‘Would you care to see which of us can run fastest?’ asked the tortoise, after some talk. The stag thought the question so silly that he only shrugged his shoulders. ‘Of course, the victor would have the right to kill the other,’ went on the tortoise. ‘Oh, on that condition I agree,’ answered the deer; ‘but I am afraid you are a dead man.’

‘It is no use trying to frighten me,’ replied the tortoise. ‘But I should like three days for training; then I shall be ready to start when the sun strikes on the big tree at the edge of the great clearing.’

The first thing the tortoise did was to call his brothers and his cousins together, and he posted them carefully under ferns all along the line of the great clearing, making a sort of ladder which stretched for many miles. This done to his satisfaction, he went back to the starting place.

The stag was quite punctual, and as soon as the sun’s rays struck the trunk of the tree the stag started off, and was soon far out of the sight of the tortoise. Every now and then he would turn his head as he ran, and call out: ‘How are you getting on?’ and the tortoise who happened to be nearest at that moment would answer: ‘All right, I am close up to you.’