“What’s that?” cried Jim Denton, when Mr. Bobbsey called at his cabin. “Bert and Nan not back from chestnutting yet? Why, I s’posed they were back hours ago!”
“So did I, and I wish they were,” said Mr. Bobbsey.
“Oh, shucks now! don’t worry,” said the jolly foreman. “We’ll find ’em all right. We’ll start right out.”
He put on his big boots and warm coat and went with Mr. Bobbsey to the cabins of some of the lumbermen. Soon a searching party was organized, and away they started through the storm along the path that earlier in the day Bert and Nan had taken to go to the chestnut grove.
“They took their lunch with them,” said Mr. Bobbsey, “so they wouldn’t be hungry until now. But they may be lost or have fallen into some hole and be half snowed over.”
“Or they may have found some logger’s or hunter’s cabin, and have gone in,” said Jim Denton. “There are plenty of cabins scattered through these woods.”
“I hope they have found shelter,” said Mr. Bobbsey anxiously.
On through the storm went the father of the Bobbsey twins and his lumbermen searchers. They stopped now and then and shouted, but no answers came back.
They had been out about an hour, and had gone more than a mile along the path that it was supposed Bert and Nan had taken, when one of the men called:
“Wait a minute! I think I heard someone call.”