“No,” agreed Nan. “Maybe if we go on a little farther we’ll find more.”
“We’ll try,” agreed Bert and, almost before they knew it, the two children had wandered some distance from the place where Mr. Denton had told them to stop.
“Oh, look! There’s a pile of nuts here!” cried Nan, reaching another grove of chestnut trees. “The squirrels haven’t been here yet! Goodie!”
This was evident, for it did not take long, poking among the dried leaves, to show that the chestnuts were quite thick on the ground. In a short time Bert and Nan had half filled the salt bags they had brought with them to hold their spoils of the woods.
“Oh, this is great!” cried Nan, straightening up after four or five minutes of picking nuts from the ground.
“A little more of this and we’ll have enough,” said her brother.
But just then Nan looked up at the sky, which she could see through the overhead trees, and what she saw in the heavens made her exclaim:
“Bert, I believe it’s going to storm! Look at the clouds! And it’s getting ever so much colder, too!”
Indeed there was a chill in the air that had not been present when the Bobbsey twins started out that morning.
“Well, we’ll go back in a few minutes,” Bert suggested. But a little while after he had said this, there was a quick darkening of the air, the wind began to blow, and, so suddenly as to startle the children, they found themselves enveloped in such a blinding, driving squall of snow that they could not see ten feet on either side!