“Yes, I guess so,” answered Mr. Bimby.
“But what has become of Bert and Nan?” asked Mr. Bobbsey.
“Now look here, Mr. Bobbsey,” said Tom Case, “don’t go to worrying about those children. They’re all right. Bert and Nan are smart, and when they saw this storm coming on they went to some shelter, you can depend on that. They’d know better than to try to make their way back to camp.”
“Well, perhaps they would,” admitted the father of the missing twins. “And perhaps, when we get back to camp, we’ll find them there. Some logger or hunter may have found them and taken them to our cabin.”
“Of course,” agreed Mr. Peterson.
By this time “Old Jim,” as he was called, to distinguish him from Jim Denton, the lumber foreman, was feeling much better. He was still weak, and he leaned on the arm of one of the lumbermen as they turned back. The storm was still fierce, and it was now night, but lanterns gave light enough to see the way through the forest.
Had it not been that the lumber and Christmas tree men knew their way through the woods, the party might never have reached Cedar Camp. As it was they lost the trail once, and had hard work to find it again. But finally they plunged through several drifts of snow that had formed, and broke out into the clearing around the sawmill.
“Did you find them?” cried Mrs. Bobbsey, when her husband came to the cabin, knocking the snow off his feet.
“No,” he answered, and he tried to make his voice as cheerful as possible. “We didn’t find them, but they’re all right. They were probably taken in by some hunter or logger.”
Even as he said this Mr. Bobbsey was disappointed that Bert and Nan had not been brought back to camp during his absence, for he had half hoped that he would find them there on his own return.