FLOSSIE AND FREDDIE WATCH THE MEN AT THE SAWMILL.
Frontispiece (Page 92)

The Bobbsey Twins

at Cedar Camp

BY

LAURA LEE HOPE

AUTHOR OF “THE BOBBSEY TWINS SERIES,” “THE

BUNNY BROWN SERIES,” “THE OUTDOOR GIRLS

SERIES,” “THE SIX LITTLE BUNKER

SERIES,” ETC.

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS

Made in the United States of America

BOOKS BY LAURA LEE HOPE

12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.

THE BOBBSEY TWINS SERIES

THE BUNNY BROWN SERIES

THE SIX LITTLE BUNKERS SERIES

THE OUTDOOR GIRLS SERIES

(Ten titles)

Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York

Copyright, 1921, by

Grosset & Dunlap

The Bobbsey Twins at Cedar Camp

CONTENTS

THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT CEDAR CAMP

CHAPTER I—FREDDIE’S SURPRISE

Very still and quiet it was in the home of the Bobbsey twins. There was hardly a sound—that is, of course, except that made by four figures tiptoeing around through the halls and different rooms.

“Hush!” suddenly exclaimed Bert Bobbsey.

“Hush!” echoed his sister Nan.

They were two of the twins.

Again came the shuffling noise made by tiptoeing feet on the front stairs.

“Quiet now, Flossie and Freddie!” whispered Bert. “Go easy, and don’t make a racket!”

He turned toward Nan, who was carrying something in a paper that rattled because of its stiffness.

“Can’t you be quieter?” asked Bert.

“It isn’t me—it’s this paper,” Nan answered. “I should have taken some of the tissue kind.”

“I wish you had,” Bert went on. “But it’s too late now. We’re almost there. As soon as we get everything hidden it will be all right.”

Suddenly there was a sound behind Bert and Nan as though someone were choking. It was followed by a smothered laugh.

“What’s that?” asked Bert in a sharp whisper. “Do you want to have everybody in the house down here seeing what we’re doing? Who did that?”

He spoke a bit sharply, in a tense whisper, but his voice was not really cross. It was as though Bert were the leader of some secret band of soldiers or of Indians, and wanted the men to do just as he had told them.

“Who did that?” he asked again.

“I—I guess I did,” answered the voice of his little sister Flossie.

“What did you do?” asked Nan. “You must try to be quiet, dear, else our fun will be spoiled. Better take sister’s hand.”

“Holdin’ your hand won’t do any good,” answered Flossie, and though she tried to talk in a whisper it was rather a loud one. “Your hand can’t stop makin’ me sneeze,” Flossie went on. “Can it?”

“Oh, did you sneeze, dear?” asked Nan, who, since she and Bert were “growing up,” felt that she must take a little more motherly care of Flossie.

“Yes, I did sneeze,” Flossie answered. “An’ maybe I’ll sneeze more again. I feel so, anyhow.”

“Don’t you dare!” exclaimed Bert.

“She didn’t sneeze! Not a reg’lar sneeze!” declared Freddie, who was carrying a cigar box. Did I mention that Freddie and Flossie were the other pair of Bobbsey twins? I meant to, anyhow.

“If she didn’t sneeze, what did she do?” asked Nan.

“I did sneeze!” insisted Flossie.

“You did not!” asserted Freddie. “You——”

“Hush! Hush!” cautioned Bert. “You’ll spoil everything!”

But Freddie was not to be shut off in that way. He came to a stop in the hall, along which the two pairs of twins were tiptoeing their way through the house, and in the half-darkness, for the light was turned low, he pointed his fat, chubby forefinger at Flossie, holding, the while, his cigar box under his other arm.

“She did not sneeze—not a reg’lar, full, fair sneeze!” he declared. “She put her hand over her mouth an’ she choked, an’ she made more noise ’n if she had sneezed. Guess I know what she done!”

“Did, dear! Did!” corrected Nan. “You must use right words now that you are in regular classes at school and are out of the kindergarten. Did—not done.”

“Well, Flossie did snort and she did not done sneeze,” went on the fat little “fireman,” as his father sometimes called him.

“I—I could ’a’ sneezed if I’d wanted to,” said Flossie. “Only I’ve an awful loud sneeze, I have. It’s louder’n yours, Freddie Bobbsey.”

“’Tis not!” declared Freddie. “You wait till I tickle my nose, an’ I’ll sneeze an’ I’ll show you! I’ll show you who can sneeze loudest!”

“No, you will not!” said big brother Bert kindly, but firmly. “You two youngsters must keep quieter, or we can’t do what we’re going to do. Nan and I will take you back upstairs and mother will make you go to bed! There!”

This was such a dreadful threat, especially as Flossie and Freddie had been allowed to stay up past their regular bedtime hour on their promise to be good, that they at once quieted down.

With Bert and Nan in the lead, the smaller Bobbsey twins followed their older brother and sister. Bert reached a door opening into a large closet near the kitchen. It was in this closet that the children were to hide the things they were carrying, and why they were going to do this you will soon learn.

But just as Bert was about to open the closet door, Flossie gave a little wriggle, and, pulling her hand away from Nan—the hand that did not hold a package—the little Bobbsey girl whispered:

“It—it’s goin’ to be some more, Nan!”

“What is, dear?”

“My—my ker—snee——!”

The rest was a sort of gurgle, choke, and cough mingled with a sneeze. Flossie had covered her mouth and nose with one hand, and thus tried not to make as much noise as she otherwise would.

“Say! everything will be spoiled,” declared Bert. “I never saw such children! We ought to ’a’ made them hide their things this afternoon!”

“Flossie can’t help it,” said Nan kindly. “Maybe she is catching cold. I must tell mother to give her some medicine.”

“’Tisn’t cold,” declared Flossie. “It’s some dust got up my nose. There was dust in the closet where Freddie made me crawl to get him a cigar box.”

“What did he want of a cigar box?” asked Nan.

“Don’t tell!” cautioned Freddie. “You promised you wouldn’t tell, Flossie Bobbsey!”

“All right, I won’t,” she promised. “Anyhow, I don’t know, ’cause you didn’t tell me. But I got him a box, an’ it was dusty an’ it makes me sneeze an’——”

“That’s enough of this sneezing!” declared Bert. “Let’s hide what we have and get out. Dinah’s in the kitchen now, and if she hears us scuffling around she’ll open the door and see us and she’ll think something is going to happen.”

“Well, something is going to happen,” whispered Nan, with a smile. But you could not see the smile because it was rather dark in the hall. “To-morrow is Dinah’s birthday, and, oh! won’t she be surprised?”

“She’ll be more surprised,” said Freddie, though neither Bert nor Nan knew just what he meant just then. Later they did.

True enough, it was the birthday of Dinah Johnson, the fat, jolly, good-natured colored cook of the Bobbsey family, which included the four twins. Dinah’s birthday was always celebrated, especially by the twins, who always brought out their presents as a sort of surprise.

This time they were bringing them down from their rooms the night before the birthday, to hide the things in a big closet near the kitchen.

Thus the gifts would be ready the first thing in the morning, to give to Dinah at the breakfast table, when daddy would call her in from the kitchen to be surprised.

It was Bert’s plan thus to hide the things ahead of time, and Flossie and Freddie, of course, had begged to be allowed to take part.

“I guess she didn’t hear anything,” said Bert, after listening a moment, for Dinah was still in the kitchen, finishing her day’s work. “The door’s shut,” Bert added. “Now then,” he went on, after a pause, “let’s hide our things and go back upstairs. Pass yours to me, Nan.”

The older Bobbsey girl did so, and just as Bert had put away his present and hers, there was a loud sound behind him.

“What’s that?” sharply whispered Bert.

“It was Freddie,” answered Flossie. “An’ he didn’t sneeze—not at all.”

“I stumbled,” answered Freddie. “I’m sorry!”

“Well, it’s too late for that. But I guess Dinah didn’t hear,” Bert said, listening a moment. “Pass me your present, Freddie, and I’ll hide it with mine.”

“I’ll hide it myself,” said the little fellow, and he made his way to the closet, squirming between Nan and Flossie.

“Oh, well, do as you please,” Bert agreed. And thus it was that none of the others saw Freddie put two packages in the closet instead of one. One package was his regular present for Dinah. The other was——

But just a moment, if you please. I want to tell this story as it should be told.

Anyhow, Freddie slipped two packages into the closet without letting Bert see him. One package was a cigar box, tied with a string, and a queer scratching noise seemed to come from within it.

“There! Now everything is hid,” said Bert, when Flossie’s package had been put on the shelf. “Now I’ll lock the door, for mother gave me the key, and Dinah can’t open it. In the morning we’ll give out the birthday presents.”

The Bobbsey twins thought that morning would never come, but it did at last, and Dinah knew nothing of their secrets, they felt sure. With eagerness the four children assembled at the breakfast table.

“Call Dinah in, Daddy, and let us give her the things,” begged Nan.

“I want to give mine first!” insisted Freddie.

“And me next,” said Flossie.

Fat Dinah came waddling in, her face all smiles.

“I ’clar to goodness! Whut’s gwine on now?” she asked. “Did I forgots to make de coffee, or am de toast burned?”

Dinah pretended to be very much alarmed, but I think she knew why she had been called in. At least she knew something of what was going to happen, but not all. She must have known it was her birthday, and the children always gave her something on such occasions.

“Dinah, please sit down a moment,” said Mr. Bobbsey, trying not to smile. “I think Freddie has something to say to you.”

“I—I got something to give you, Dinah!” cried the little fellow, hurrying out to the closet, which Bert had unlocked.

“Bress yo’ heart, honey lamb! Has yo’ got suffin’ fo’ ole Dinah?” she asked with a kind smile.

“You—you’ll be s’prised,” said Freddie, as he handed the fat black cook a cigar box, tied with string.

“Why, Freddie!” exclaimed Nan. “That isn’t your present! Yours is wrapped in blue paper. Don’t you remember? I wrapped it up for you.”

“I’ll give Dinah that present in a minute!” said Freddie, his eyes shining. “I have two for her!”

“Bress his heart!” murmured the cook, as she fumbled with the string.

A moment later it came off, and as the cover of the box flew open out jumped a fat little gray mouse!

“Oh, my! Oh, mah good lan’!” screamed Dinah. “Oh, a mouse! A mouse!” and she jumped up in such a hurry that she knocked over the chair on which she had been sitting.

CHAPTER II—LOCKED UP

“Get him! Get him!” cried Bert Bobbsey, making a dive for the little mouse.

“Oh, don’t let him come near me!” screamed Nan, as she left her seat and hurried over toward her mother.

“Nonsense!” exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey. “To be frightened at a poor little mouse!”

The mouse ran under one chair after another, and circled around beneath the dining room table.

“Where’s Snoop?” cried Bert, stooping down to watch which way the mouse ran. “Get Snoop in to catch the mouse!”

“Don’t let him get me!” begged Flossie, and she ran over to Nan.

“Children, be quiet!” commanded Mr. Bobbsey. “All this excitement over a little mouse! Freddie, you did very wrong to put a mouse in a box and give it to Dinah for a birthday present!” and he spoke rather sternly to the little fellow.

“Am dat mouse mah birfday present?” asked the fat cook, who was huddled against the wall. “If it is I don’t want it nohow!”

Isn’t it queer how frightened some women and girls are of a mouse? I wonder why that it is? Anyhow, Nan, Flossie and Dinah seemed much frightened, while Bert was more interested in seeing which way the little gray creature ran.

“Get Snoop! Where is Snoop?” asked Bert, calling for the family cat. “Snoop will love to chase this mouse!”

“I help you catch my mouse for Snoop!” offered Freddie.

He had stood, eagerly waiting, to see what would happen when Dinah opened his extra present box. And enough had happened to satisfy even fun-loving Freddie.

“Here, I’ll fix that mouse!” cried Mr. Bobbsey. “Let it alone, Bert. I’ll drive it out!”

Mr. Bobbsey picked up a small open glass salt dish from the table, and was about to throw it at the mouse under the table.

“Don’t do that,” said his wife.

“Why not?” asked Mr. Bobbsey, holding the salt dish in readiness.

“Because you’ll spill the salt and it will have to be cleaned up.”

“I’ll get the mouse!” cried Freddie. “I’ll get him!”

He ran over to the goldfish tank in one corner of the room. On the table on which the tank rested was a tiny net of cloth on a handle and wire frame. Bert used the net to lift out the fish when he wanted to clean the tank, which he intended doing that day.

“I’ll catch the mouse under this!” cried Freddie, grabbing up the little net and trying to dive under the table. But the little fellow slipped, and knocked over a chair. It happened to fall on Flossie’s foot. Instantly the small Bobbsey girl set up a cry.

“Oh! Oh, Freddie Bobbsey! Now look what you did! My toenails is all broken! Oh! Oh!”

“Hush! Hush!” begged Mother Bobbsey, hugging Flossie.

“Oh, mah good lan’!” exclaimed Dinah, “I neber did see such a birfday as dish yeah! Nebber in all mah born days!”

Bert caught up his aluminum napkin ring and threw it across the room as the mouse made a dart toward the door leading into the kitchen.

“There he goes!” cried Bert. “No use getting Snoop now!”

“Well, I’m glad the creature is out of the way!” said Mrs. Bobbsey, with a sigh of relief. “Now, Freddie, what possessed you to do a thing like that—to give Dinah a mouse for her birthday?”

“And where did you get it?” asked Bert. “I should think you’d be afraid of it, Freddie.”

“He was in the box, and I shut the cover down quick—like that”—Freddie clapped his hands together—“and I ketched him.”

“You should say ‘caught,’” murmured Nan. “Your teacher wouldn’t like to have you say ‘ketched,’ Freddie.”

“Well, I—I got him, anyhow,” Freddie went on. “An’ I tied some string around the box and I kept the mouse and I thought maybe Dinah would laugh an’—an’——”

Freddie looked around the room. All too much had happened from his little surprise. The whole place was in confusion.

“If dey is any mo’ birfday presents like dat,” said Dinah, “I reckon I better go!”

“Oh, no!” exclaimed Nan. “Mine is a nice one, Dinah!”

“So’s mine!” echoed Flossie.

“An’ I’ve another!” added Freddie. “I’m sorry I scared you, Dinah.”

“Well, we’ll forgive you this time,” said his father. “Bring out the other presents now.”

And while this is being done I will take just a moment to tell my new readers something about the children who are to be the main characters in this story.

If you have read the first book of this series, called “The Bobbsey Twins,” you have learned that Mr. Bobbsey had a lumber business in the eastern city of Lakeport, on Lake Metoka. Bert and Nan were the two older twins. They had dark brown hair and brown eyes and were rather tall and slim. The younger Bobbsey twins were Flossie and Freddie. They were somewhat short and stout, and had light hair and blue eyes. The children had many good times together and with their playmates, Grace Lavine, Charlie Mason, Dannie Rugg, Nellie Parks and Ruth Nelson. They also had fun with Snoop, their pet cat, and with Snap, their dog.

There are a number of books coming between the first volume and the one just before this. The Bobbsey twins went to the country to visit Uncle Daniel, and at the seashore they stayed with Uncle William. Besides these trips the four children made a voyage on a houseboat, visited a great city, camped on Blueberry Island, went to Washington, and made a trip at sea. They had, a week or so before celebrating Dinah’s birthday, returned home after some exciting times out West.

You may read about these last adventures in the book just before this present volume. It is called “The Bobbsey Twins in the Great West,” and it tells how Bert, Nan, Flossie and Freddie helped solve a strange mystery about an old man.

It was now fall, and on their return from the West the Bobbsey twins had started to school again. Bert and Nan had gone into a higher grade, and Flossie and Freddie, though they were still the babies of the family, were now somewhat advanced at school, and were in regular classes, attending morning and afternoon, instead of going just in the morning, as they had done while they were still in the kindergarten.

One of the first affairs the Bobbsey twins had taken part in since their return from the West had been Dinah’s birthday celebration. Each of the children had bought the cook, of whom they were very fond, a present, but Freddie had provided an extra one, as we have seen.

“Don’t ever do it again, Freddie!” cautioned his father, when quiet had once more settled over the household.

“I won’t, Daddy,” he promised.

“Then you may give Dinah her regular present,” said Mother Bobbsey.

Freddie handed the cook a package wrapped in blue paper.

“Is yo’ suah dey isn’t no mouse in dis?” asked Dinah, pretending to be frightened.

“No mouse!” Freddie assured her. “You open it!”

And when Dinah had done so she found a bottle of perfume, which, she declared, was “jest de sweetest kind what ebber was!” It was exactly what she had wished for, she said.

Then the other presents were given to her. Nan’s was a pocketbook, and Bert’s a pair of comfortable slippers. Flossie handed Dinah a gay, red silk handkerchief.

“An’ when I puts pufume on dat, an’ walks out, everybody’ll be wishin’ dey was me!” declared the fat, black cook. “Dish suah am a lovely birfday!”

There were presents, also, from Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey, and when she had admired everything, and thanked them all, Dinah finished bringing in the breakfast. They all laughed at Freddie’s mouse, and he told how he had caught it.

He had had some nuts in a cigar box, and the day before, coming softly up to it, he had seen a little mouse nibbling away among the nuts and shells. As quick as a wink Freddie clapped the cover down, and had caught the mouse fast. Then, without saying anything to anyone about it, he had given it to Dinah.

“Come on, Bert, or we’ll be late for school!” called Nan, as she finished her breakfast.

“I’ll be right with you,” her brother answered. “If Charlie Mason calls tell him to wait. He and I are going fishing this afternoon.”

“Can I come?” asked Freddie. “I’ll help dig worms.”

“Not now,” Bert answered. “Maybe to-morrow.”

“You wait for me, Freddie!” called Flossie.

“Yes, I’ll wait,” he promised.

Soon the Bobbsey twins were on their way to school. Bert walked with Charlie Mason and Dannie Rugg, while Grace Lavine and Nellie Parks strolled along with Nan.

“Did you bring your skipping rope?” asked Grace of Nan. Grace was very fond of this fun, though once she had jumped too much and had been taken ill.

“No, I didn’t bring it,” Nan answered. “I brought a new bean bag, though, and we can play that at recess.”

“Oh, that’ll be fun!” cried Nellie.

Bert and Charlie were talking about the best place to go fishing. And the younger Bobbsey twins were talking about something else.

“If he does it again to-day, you tell me an’ I’ll fix him,” said Freddie to Flossie.

“I will,” his golden-haired sister answered. “Will you make him stop, Freddie?”

“Sure I will! You come and tell me!”

“What is it you are going to do?” asked Nan of her smaller brother and sister. But just then the warning bell rang and they all had to run so they would not be late, and Nan forgot about what she had overheard.

At recess there were jolly times in the school playground. Some of the boys got up a baseball game, and others played marbles, leapfrog or mumble-the-peg. The girls skipped rope or tossed bean bags, while some played different kinds of tag. It was cool, so that running about and jumping made one feel fine.

Suddenly from the lower end of the playground, near the shed where the janitor kept his brooms, a lawnmower, and other things, came a cry of alarm.

“That’s Flossie!” exclaimed Nan, pausing in the midst of a bean bag game. “Something’s the matter!”

She caught sight of Flossie and Freddie in some sort of a battle with Nick Malone, one of the “bad” boys of the school. Flossie and Freddie seemed to be having a fight with Nick.

However, the battle was soon over. Before Nan reached the scene or could call to Bert to come to her help, Nick disappeared, and Flossie and Freddie, each laughing, ran over to the other side of the yard.

“Oh, I guess they are all right,” said Nan, as she stopped running and turned back.

Then the bell rang to call the children in from their play, and they took their places in long lines. A little later Bert and Nan were in their room, saying their lessons, and Flossie and Freddie were with their classmates, getting ready to recite in geography.

Miss Snell, their teacher, looked over the room. She noticed one vacant seat.

“Where is Nick?” asked Miss Snell. “He was here before recess. Did anyone see him go home?”

No one answered for a moment, and then Flossie raised her little, fat, chubby hand.

“Yes, Flossie, what is it?” asked Miss Snell, with a smile.

“Nick didn’t go home,” said the little girl. “He—he’s out in the yard.”

“Out in the yard?” exclaimed the teacher. “He should come in!”

“If you please, he can’t,” said Freddie suddenly. “He’s locked up! I locked him up!”

CHAPTER III—THANKSGIVING

Miss Snell was not quite sure that she understood Freddie Bobbsey. She looked at the little twin, smiled to make him understand that she was not cross, and said:

“What did you do to Nick, Freddie?”

“I locked him up,” Freddie answered. “In the tool shed. I have the key, too,” and, marching up to Miss Snell’s desk he laid on it a large key.

“You locked Nick in the tool shed!” repeated the surprised teacher. “Why, Freddie Bobbsey! what a strange thing to do. Why did you do it?”

“He pulled my hair,” Flossie explained. “I mean Nick did. He pulled it yesterday, too, and I told Freddie and Freddie said he would make Nick stop.”

“Yes, go on, please,” urged Miss Snell, as Flossie grew silent.

“Well, when he pulled it again to-day,” resumed the little girl, “I hollered for Freddie and we hit Nick and he hit us and we pushed him into the shed and—and——”

“I locked the door!” finished Freddie. “You can hear him hollerin’ to get out,” he added. “Listen!”

The windows had been opened to freshen the air in the classroom, and as silence followed Freddie’s last remark Miss Snell and the children could plainly hear, coming from the shed, the voice of someone calling:

“Let me out! Let me out!”

“That’s Nick,” calmly explained Freddie. “But I’m not going to let him out ’cause he pulled Flossie’s hair.”

“Well, of course, he shouldn’t do that,” said Miss Snell. “But you should not have locked him in, Freddie. I shall have to tell the principal and get him to let Nick out.”

The eyes of Flossie and Freddie grew big as the teacher said this. The eyes of the other children opened wide also. To have to tell “the principal” anything meant that it was very serious.

“But I am sure you did not mean to do wrong,” Miss Snell added, as she saw that Freddie and Flossie looked rather frightened. “It will be all right, I’ll have the principal let Nick out. You may look over your geography lesson while I am gone. I want you to tell me, when I come back, what is a river, a lake, and an island.”

“We know about a island,” said Flossie in a loud whisper. “Once we camped on Blueberry Island, didn’t we, Freddie?”

“Yep!” he answered. “An’ I fell in!”

“Well, you may tell us about that later,” and Miss Snell tried not to laugh. “But don’t talk any more in school; and study your lesson while I go to Mr. Nixon’s office.”

While Miss Snell was out of the room I do not believe much studying was done by Flossie, Freddie or any of their classmates. They all listened as, through the open window, came the cries of Nick Malone calling:

“Let me out! Let me out!”

“I locked him in—’cause he pulled Flossie’s hair!” declared Freddie, and Freddie was looked upon as quite a hero by the boys and girls in his room.

By standing up, Flossie, Freddie and the others in their class could see the tool shed. And the children stood up and looked out as Miss Snell and the principal went to release the locked-up boy. He came out crying, and seemed frightened. But he soon quieted down, and promised never again to pull Flossie’s hair, while Freddie was made to promise never again to lock anyone in the tool shed.

“Tell your teacher, or tell me, when anyone plagues your sister, Freddie,” the principal said.

“Yes’m—I mean yes, sir,” Freddie answered.

Neither he nor Flossie had any more trouble with the “bad” boy, about whose teasing they had talked on their way to school that morning. I think, after being locked up, that Nick was afraid of Freddie. At any rate, Flossie’s hair was not again pulled.

“Our smaller twins are growing up,” said Mr. Bobbsey to his wife at home that night, when the story of what had happened in school had been told at the supper table.

“Yes,” agreed Mrs. Bobbsey. “Our little ‘fireman’ and our ‘fat fairy’ will soon be almost as big as Bert and Nan.” Fireman and fairy were the pet names for the smaller Bobbsey twins. But they were getting almost too old for pet names now.

The weeks passed, and the weather grew colder, though, as yet, no snow had appeared. Freddie and Flossie, who had gotten out their sleds soon after coming home from the West, looked at the sky anxiously each day.

“Do you think it will ever snow?” asked Flossie of her mother. “I want to go coasting.”

“So do I, and skating, too,” Freddie added.

“Oh, there is still plenty of time for it to snow this winter,” said their mother. “Why, it isn’t Thanksgiving yet.”

“Oh, that’s so!” exclaimed Freddie. “Thanksgiving is coming, an’ we’ll have cranberry sauce an’ turkey!”

“An’ pie an’ cake!” cried Flossie.

“Thanksgiving is not meant only for feasting,” said their mother. “It is a time for being thankful for all your blessings. It is a time, also, to think of the poor, and to try to help them.”

“I wish we could help some poor,” said Flossie. “Is it fun, Mother?”

“Well, I don’t know that you would call it fun,” her mother replied, with a smile, “though it gives more pleasure than many things that you do call ‘fun’. Just try it and see.”

Rather thoughtful, Flossie and Freddie went out together. It was the Saturday before Thanksgiving and they did not have to go to school. They each had two cents to spend, and it was while going down the street to the nearest candy store that they passed the home of Miss Alicia Pompret.

“Hello, Bobbsey twins!” called Miss Pompret to Flossie and Freddie.

“Hello!” answered the blue-eyed little boy and girl. They knew Miss Pompret quite well, since Bert and Nan had, on their trip to Washington, discovered some of the elderly lady’s missing valuable china. Miss Pompret was what some people would call “rich,” and she had offered a reward for the finding of her rare sugar-bowl and milk-pitcher. It was these pieces that Nan had, by chance, seen in a secondhand store window, and Miss Pompret paid the older Bobbsey twins the reward, which they turned in to charity.

“Are you going to the store for your mother?” asked Miss Pompret of Flossie and Freddie, as they paused at her door.

“We’re going to the store for ourselves,” Freddie answered.

“We have two cents apiece,” added his sister.

“Oh, I see!” laughed the elderly, maiden lady. “Well, on your way would you mind stopping at the grocer’s and telling him he hasn’t yet sent the barrel of flour, the barrel of potatoes, and the ten hams I ordered. Tell him I expect them to-day.”

“My! you’re gettin’ a lot of stuff, Miss Pompret,” said Flossie.

“Well, you see, I am going to give a large dinner to a number of poor people for Thanksgiving,” said Miss Pompret, “and I want some things for them to take home with them. That’s why I’m ordering so much.”

“For the poor!” murmured Freddie.

“Yes, dear,” went on the lady. “You know Thanksgiving is not meant to see how much we can eat, but to think of our blessings and help other persons to have blessings that they may be thankful for.”

“That’s what mother said,” remarked Flossie. “Yes’m, we’ll stop at the grocery for you.”

“Thank you,” called Miss Pompret.

Then, as she and Freddie walked on, Flossie turned to her brother and said:

“Freddie, didn’t we ought to do something for the poor?”

“Maybe we ought,” he agreed. “But who is poor?”

“Anybody that has ragged clothes is poor,” observed Flossie. “We could give ’em some of our clothes, ’cause I’ve got so many my closet is full.”

“I’ve two pair of pants,” observed Freddie. “I don’t need but one, I guess. But you can’t eat clothes, Flossie.”

“I know it, but you have to have clothes when it’s cold. And it maybe will snow for Thanksgiving. Oh, Freddie! we could give our two cents to somebody poor for Thanksgiving!” Flossie’s eyes were shining with delight.

“Yes, we could do that,” said Freddie, slowly. “But you can’t get much clothes for two cents and not much to eat, I don’t guess.”

Flossie thought this over for a moment, and then her face lighted up.

“I know what we can do!” she said. “We can look for some poor ragged people, and take them to our house for Thanksgiving. Mother or father could give them some clothes and they could have some of our turkey. Daddy and mother have some dressings, too, like Miss Pompret said.”

“She didn’t say ‘dressings,’” objected Freddie. “It’s ‘blessings,’ like you get in Sunday-school.”

“Oh,” said Flossie. “Well, we could get some for the poor. Let’s do it, Freddie.”

“All right,” agreed the little fellow.

They were just going into the candy store, having stopped at the grocer’s with the message from Miss Pompret, when Flossie and Freddie caught sight of a ragged boy and girl, about their own age, standing with their faces close against the glass of the show window of the toy and candy shop.

“Freddie, look!” whispered Flossie.

“They’re poor!” whispered Freddie. “Let’s take them!”

Flossie nodded in agreement, and then they went up to the ragged children who were eagerly gazing in the window, which was partly filled with Christmas toys.

“Come on with us,” said Freddie, tapping the other boy on the shoulder.

Quickly the boy turned, doubled up his fist, and, thrusting the ragged girl behind him, he exclaimed:

“Now you let us alone! We wasn’t doin’ nothin’! We was just lookin’ in the winder, an’ that’s what it’s for! You let us alone!”

CHAPTER IV—BERT IN DANGER

Flossie and Freddie were so surprised at the strange action on the part of the ragged boy that they hardly knew what to do. Flossie looked at Freddie and Freddie looked at his sister, and then they looked at the strange boy and girl.

“You let her alone, an’ you let me alone!” ordered the ragged boy. “I ain’t done nothin’, an’ she ain’t done nothin’!”

“You shouldn’t say ‘ain’t,’ ’cause it ain’t—I mean it isn’t a good word. Our teacher says so,” Flossie quickly admonished the strange boy.

“Well, I don’t care what I say, you oughtn’t to drive us away from lookin’ in this winder,” objected the boy. “Nice smells comes out; and when you ain’t—I mean when you isn’t got any money to buy candy, you can smell it!”

Flossie and Freddie looked at each other in surprise. To be so poor that one had to “smell” candy instead of eating it, was to be poor indeed! Flossie opened her fat chubby hand and looked at the two moist pennies clutched there. Freddie did the same. Then the small Bobbsey twins, with one accord, held out the money to the boy and girl.

“Here,” said Freddie. “Take it!”

“Mine too!” added Flossie. “You can buy candy with it!”

For a moment the ragged boy and girl did not know what to say. Then a smile came over the boy’s face. His fist unclenched, and his sister smiled too.

“You mean this—for us?” he asked.

“Sure!” answered Freddie. “We don’t need candy, and we’ll feel good for Thanksgivin’!”

“Oh, I’m going to buy two lollypops!” cried the ragged girl.

“I want gum!” said the boy, and into the store they disappeared.

Freddie drew a long breath.

“I—I feel happy, don’t you?” he asked Flossie.

“Yes,” she answered. “I—I guess I do! Anyhow, we can ask mother for more pennies when we go home.”

“Let’s take them home for Thanksgiving,” suggested Freddie.

“You mean that ragged boy and girl?” asked Flossie.

“Yes. Miss Pompret is going to feed some poor, and we can feed some at our house. Let’s take ’em home,” went on Freddie.

“Oh, that will be fine!” Flossie agreed. “Let’s!”

When they came out of the candy store the ragged boy and his sister, who at first thought Flossie and Freddie had wanted to drive them away from the window, were smiling.

“You’re coming home with us!” announced Freddie, taking the boy’s hand.

“For Thanksgiving,” added Flossie. “Course it isn’t Thanksgiving yet, but we want to feel good when it does come, so we’re going to feed you now.”

“Well, I’m hungry all right,” sighed the ragged boy.

“So’m I,” said his sister.

And so, hardly knowing what was going to happen, the ragged boy, who said his name was Dick, and his sister, who was Mary Thompson, went with the little Bobbsey twins.

Mrs. Bobbsey was very much surprised when her little son and daughter came up the steps, leading a strange ragged boy and girl.

“We brought them home for Thanksgiving, like Miss Pompret’s going to do,” said Freddie.

“So’s to make us be more happier,” added Flossie. “And we gave them our two cents, so please can we have more? And they’re hungry, Mother!”

Mrs. Bobbsey understood that it was the kind hearts of Flossie and Freddie that had brought all this about. So she welcomed the two strange children, and took them out to Dinah, who, you may be sure, fed them enough, and almost too much.

After that meal, which Dick said was the “best feed” he ever had eaten, and after Flossie and Freddie had finished watching their strange, ragged guests eat, Mrs. Bobbsey asked Dick and his sister some questions.

She found out that they lived on the other side of town, that their father was dead, and that their mother did what she could for her children.

“Do you go to our school?” asked Freddie, during a pause in his mother’s questions. “We’ve a nice school, and our teacher’s name is Miss Snell, and——”

“And Freddie locked a boy up in the tool shed ’cause he pulled my hair—I mean the bad boy pulled my hair,” broke in Flossie.

“We don’t go to school—our clothes is too ragged,” said Mary, in a low voice.

“Never mind, my dear. Perhaps I can find some clothes for you that aren’t quite so full of holes,” offered Mrs. Bobbsey kindly. “Clothes with holes in are fine for summer,” she said, with a laugh, “but not so good for winter. I’ll see what I can find.”

She found some good, half-worn garments belonging to the twins, and Dick and Mary took the clothes home. The result was that they appeared at school the following Monday. But neither Flossie nor Freddie spoke of their mother having given the two fatherless children clothes to wear.

“Now we’ll be happy for Thanksgiving; won’t we, Freddie?” asked Flossie, when it was settled that Dick and Mary were to be taken care of.

“Yes,” Freddie agreed. “And I hope we have a big turkey!”

“An’ cranberry sauce!” added his sister.

There was a fine Thanksgiving dinner at the Bobbsey home, but the mother of the four twins did not forget the poor. She helped Miss Pompret with that lady’s Thanksgiving feast for those who were not fortunate enough to have one of their own, and Mr. Bobbsey and some other good-hearted men of Lakeport provided money so that the Salvation Army could feed a number of hungry men who were out of work.

Still there was one reason why at least Flossie and Freddie, of the Bobbsey family, were not quite happy that Thanksgiving day. And the reason was because there was no snow. The children had polished their sleds, had wiped the rust off the runners, and were all ready for a coast. But without snow there can be no sleigh riding, and though the weather was cold, the sun shone from a cloudless sky, and Flossie and Freddie were much disappointed.

“Do you think it will ever snow, Mother?” asked Flossie for about the twentieth time.

“And will there be ice so I can skate?” Freddie wanted to know.

“Well, my dears, there will be snow and ice, surely, in a little while,” answered Mrs. Bobbsey. “But when I can not say. You must be patient. Think of your blessings, as Uncle William would say.”

“I want to have some fun,” complained Freddie. “Oh, look!” he suddenly cried, coming back to the window away from which he had started to go.

“What is it?” asked Flossie.

“It’s our cat—Snoop! A big dog just came along and Snoop ran up the tree. Now he can’t get down!”

“Oh, of course Snoop can get down out of a tree,” said Nan. “He’s often climbed up and down before.”

But this time Snoop did not come down. Whether he had been too much frightened by the dog, or whether he was afraid of falling if he started to come down backward out of the tree, I don’t know. But Snoop stayed up on a limb, where he cried pitifully.

“I’ll get him down,” offered Bert. “I can climb out on that limb from our front porch roof. I’ve done it before.”

Bert went upstairs, climbed out on the porch roof, and a little later was over in the tree where Snoop was perched.

“Mew! Mew!” dismally cried the cat.

“I’m coming to get you,” said Bert, kindly. “Wait a minute, Snoop!”

From the ground Flossie, Freddie and Nan watched Bert make his way out on a limb toward Snoop. And then, all of a sudden, there was a cracking, breaking sound and Bert cried:

“Oh, I’m falling! I’m going to fall!”

CHAPTER V—CHRISTMAS TREES

Several things happened all in a moment. The cracking limb, Bert’s cries, and the swaying of the bough as it bent toward the ground with the weight of the Bobbsey boy frightened Snoop, the cat. All this did just what was needed, for it so frightened Snoop that down he scrambled out of the tree, not caring whether or not he fell.

Bert, as soon as he felt the tree branch giving way with him, reached out his arms and grasped whatever came first to his hands. This happened to be another branch over his head, so that there he was, his feet on one limb that was slowly bending beneath his weight, and his hands grasping a branch above him.

And, to add to the excitement, Flossie and Freddie, who saw what danger Bert was in, set up a dismal crying.

“Oh, Bert’s going to fall! Bert’s going to fall!” yelled Freddie.

“Daddy! Mother! Dinah! Somebody! Come quick!” exclaimed Flossie. “Catch Bert before he falls!”

Nan ran out under the tree and stood with her dress held up, as she used to do when her father picked apples and dropped them down to her. Nan may have thought Bert could drop down and she would catch him, as a man jumps into a circus net from the top of the tent. But, again, perhaps Nan was so excited that she really did not know what she was doing.

However, daddy and mother came hurrying to the window, attracted by the cries of the children, and Mr. Bobbsey, seeing just what was needed, said to his wife:

“Run and tell Sam to come here with the ladder. It stands back of the chicken house.”

“I will,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. So, instead of running out after Mr. Bobbsey to see poor Bert dangling in the tree, she hurried to the rear door and called to Sam, who was working over Mr. Bobbsey’s automobile.

“Sam! Sam! Bring the ladder out in front, quick!” cried Mrs. Bobbsey.

“Ladder! De ladder?” repeated the colored husband of fat Dinah. “Am dey a fire some place?”

“No fire!” answered Mrs. Bobbsey. “But Bert is up a tree and he is falling! Mr. Bobbsey wants the ladder to get him down! Hurry!”

“Oh!” answered Sam. Then he hurried to the chicken house, got the ladder, and hurried around to the front of the house with it.

“Can you hold on a little longer, Bert?” asked his father anxiously, as Sam began to raise the ladder up into the tree.

“I—I guess so,” was the answer. “Is Snoop all right?”

“Yes, Snoop’s all right. He jumped. But don’t you jump!” called Nan.

“I—I won’t,” Bert answered.

Then his father and Sam raised the ladder up into the tree, and a few minutes later they had rescued Bert, helping him so that he could put his feet on the ladder and climb down.

“What made you go up?” asked his mother, when the excitement was all over.

“I went up after Snoop,” said Bert. “A strange dog chased him up the tree.”

“Well, of course, you meant to be kind,” said his father. “But you must be careful when in a tree. Very often a branch may look sound and strong, as though it would hold you up. But when you step on it or pull on it, it breaks. It is always a good plan, if you climb a tree in the woods—or anywhere else—to pull on a limb to test it before you bear your full weight on it. If you hear a cracking sound it means that the branch will break.”

“I heard a cracking sound,” Bert said. “But that was after I got out on the limb with my feet.”

“Then it was almost too late,” his father said. “But remember always to test a branch before you trust yourself to it.”

The Bobbsey twins and the others went back into the house, and the rest of the Thanksgiving day passed pleasantly. Snoop and Snap had been given especially good dinners in honor of the occasion.

In the morning, when Flossie and Freddie awakened, which generally happened at the same time, the little fellow ran to the window and looked out.

“Oh, look, Flossie! Look!” he cried. “Come and see!”

“Is Snoop up the tree again?” asked the little girl.

“No, but it’s snowing! Snowing hard! Now we can have some fun with our sleds! Come on, we’ll go coasting!”

Later the two smaller Bobbsey twins, having had their breakfasts, ran out to play in the snow. Quite a little had fallen during the night, and more was coming down. It was just about right for starting to make a coasting hill.

Not far from the Bobbsey home, on a side street, was a hill where the smaller children had their fun. Bert and Nan, with some of the older boys and girls, generally went to a longer and steeper hill some distance away. But this time Bert and Nan had not gotten out their sleds.

“I’m going to wait for Charlie Mason,” said Bert. “He said he’d come over as soon as it snowed. We’re going to make a bob.”

“May I have a ride on it?” asked Nan. “I’ll help you get some pieces of carpet to tack on if you’ll let me ride.”

“Sure we’ll let you,” agreed Bert. And then he went to telephone over to ask if Charlie were coming.

Meanwhile Flossie and Freddie and some of their friends were having fun on the small hill. Each of the smaller Bobbsey twins had a sled, and the children had races to see who would get first to the bottom of the slope. With merry shouts and laughter they played amid the swirling flakes of white snow.

The fun was at its liveliest, and Flossie and Freddie were among the merriest, when along came Nick Malone, the boy whom Freddie had locked in the tool shed at school.

“Oh, Freddie! Look!” whispered Flossie, dropping the rope of her sled and moving closer to her brother.

“What is it?” asked Freddie, for he was watching Sammie Henderson go down hill backward on a “dare.”

“It’s that—that bad boy!” whispered Flossie. “He might pull my hair!”

“If he does, I’ll—I’ll——” began Freddie, and then up swaggered Nick.

“Hu! you can’t do nothin’ to me now,” he sneered. “There ain’t no teacher or principal here! There!” and he reached over as if to pull Flossie’s hair.

“You let my sister alone!” cried Freddie.

“Yah! Yah! Why don’t you wear girls’ dresses!” taunted Nick. “You’re a girl-boy! Girl-boy!”

“I am not!” declared Freddie, while the other coasters gathered around. “You go on away!”

“I’m going to have a coast! Here, I guess I’ll take this sled!” cried Nick, and before Freddie could stop him the bad boy caught Flossie’s sled from the ground and ran with it toward the top of the hill.

“Here! You come back! You let my sister’s sled alone!” shouted Freddie, racing after Nick.

Now Freddie was a good runner, but Nick had the start of him, and reached the top of the hill first. However, Freddie was not far behind, and no sooner did Nick throw himself flat on the little Bobbsey girl’s sled, face down, than Freddie made a jump, and right on top of Nick’s back he landed!

“Hi! Get off!” cried Nick, his breath rather knocked out of him, for Freddie was a fat, chubby little fellow.

“You get off my sister’s sled!” demanded Flossie’s brother.

But it was too late for this. It was impossible for Nick to stop now, and down the hill he coasted on Flossie’s sled, with Freddie on his back, both boys coasting together!

It was a trick the children often did on the hill, and there was nothing hard about it. Only this time it happened to be an accident, and the two boys were enemies and not friends.

Freddie was so surprised at the sudden and unexpected coast that he just had to hold fast to Nick and he could say nothing more. But when the bottom of the hill was reached, Freddie, being on top, began to pound Nick’s back with his two sturdy fists.

“Hey! Quit! Let me up!” begged the bad boy.

“Not till you give me my sister’s sled!” insisted Freddie.

“Well, how can I give it to her when you’re sittin’ on me?” yelled Nick.

With that Freddie got off the other lad’s back, allowing him to get up. The other boys gathered around, thinking there might be a fight. But Nick had had enough. He found Freddie braver than he had thought, and turned away, muttering:

“Aw, I only wanted a ride an’ I got it!”

“Yes, and Freddie had one too!” laughed Sam Miller.

Nick walked away, and then the younger Bobbsey twins again started coasting, Freddie taking Flossie’s sled back to her.

It was still snowing when noon came, and Flossie and Freddie had to go home to lunch. They found Bert and Charlie busy making a bobsled in the back yard. The older boys were fastening together their sleds by a long plank, and Nan was helping by tacking some strips of carpet on the plank.

“Oh, can we ride on that?” asked Freddie.

“Maybe,” said his brother. “How’s the little hill?”

“Nice,” Freddie answered.

“An’ you ought to’ve seen Nick Malone take my sled and Freddie jump on his back!” cried Flossie.

“Is that fellow bothering you two again?” demanded Bert, looking up with a hammer in his hand. “I’ll get after him, that’s what I will!”

“Freddie got after him,” explained Flossie. “Oh, I’m so glad it snows! We’re going coasting some more after dinner.”

“Sure!” added Freddie.

At the dinner table Bert and Nan noticed that their father seemed worried over something. He went to the window several times to look out at the storm.

“If this keeps up the shipment will never arrive,” he said to his wife.

“You mean the Christmas trees?” she asked.

“Yes,” answered Mr. Bobbsey. “They are late now, and something seems to be wrong up there in the woods.”

“Shan’t we have any Christmas tree?” asked Freddie, who did not know just what was being talked about.

“Oh, I guess so,” his father said, and again he went to look at the snow.

“Are you going to sell Christmas trees?” Bert asked. He had caught the word “shipment,” and knew it had to do with some part of his father’s lumber business.

“Yes, I am going into the Christmas tree business this year,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “That is, I have bought a large shipment of them to be sent here to me from the North Woods. If they get here in time I can sell them and make some money. But if this snow keeps up, the carloads of trees, or the shipment, will be delayed, and if they don’t get here at least a week before Christmas they will be of little use to me. But perhaps the snow will not be as heavy as I fear.”

“I didn’t know you sold Christmas trees,” remarked Nan.

THE CHILDREN HAD GREAT FUN COASTING.

“I never did before,” her father said. “It’s a new business for me, and I may make a failure of it.”

Then the older Bobbsey twins began to understand how it is that snow can bring pleasure to boys and girls, but may often mean trouble for older people in business.

“Well, we’ll hope for the best,” said Mr. Bobbsey, as he started back to the office after dinner, when the white flakes were still falling steadily. “I may have to go up to the North Woods to see about that shipment of trees if they don’t get here soon.”

“Could we go?” asked Bert, having a joyful vision of a mid-winter trip to one of his father’s lumber camps.

“Well, I’ll see,” answered Mr. Bobbsey, and Nan and Bert looked at each other in delight.

Some strange adventures were ahead of them, though they did not know it.

CHAPTER VI—OFF TO CEDAR CAMP

Bert and Charlie, with Nan’s help, finished the bobsled in time to use on the coasting hill that afternoon and early in the evening. And it is a good thing they had hurried with it, for the next day there came a thaw and the snow began to melt. It melted so fast that by noon there was scarcely enough for Flossie and Freddie to have any fun on even the small hill, and what snow there was had mostly turned to slush.

“Oh, dear,” sighed Nan, when she found that she and her brothers and sister had to give up their pleasure, “this isn’t any fun!”

“That’s right,” agreed Bert. “But the winter isn’t over. We always have a lot of snow after Christmas.”

“And I suppose we ought to be glad there isn’t a big storm,” went on Nan, when it had been decided to give up coasting and the older Bobbsey twins were dragging home the new bobsled.

“Why ought we be glad?” Bert wanted to know.

“Because if it doesn’t storm so much daddy can get his shipment of Christmas trees here and make some money.”

“Oh, that’s so—I forgot!” exclaimed Bert. “But if the trees do come we can’t make that trip with him to the North Woods to see what the matter is. And I wanted to go on a trip like that, for we don’t have much school now, on account of the holidays.”

“It would be nice to go off somewhere in the winter,” agreed Nan. “Remember what fun we had at Snow Lodge?”

“I should say so!” cried Bert. “But there isn’t much use talking about snow when it thaws like this,” and he stepped into a puddle of slush.

“Oh, be careful!” cried Nan. “You’ll get your feet wet!”

“I have rubbers on,” said Bert.

There was nothing to do but to leave the bobsled and the other sleds in the shed attached to the garage. There they would stay until more snow came. When Bert went into the house, after putting away the bobsled and helping Flossie and Freddie store away their smaller sleds, he found his mother waiting for him.

“Bert,” said Mrs. Bobbsey, “here is a special delivery letter that just came for your father. It should have been delivered at the office, but they sent it here by mistake, and Dinah took it in before I could call to the boy to take it back with him. I called your father up about it on the telephone and he said, if you came in, to have you bring it down.”

“I’ll go,” replied Bert cheerfully.

“Oh, may we go along?” begged Flossie.

“We’ll be good!” promised Freddie.

“Shall I take them?” asked Bert of his mother.

“If you want to,” she answered. “Does Nan want to go?”

But Nan, as it happened, had some sewing she wanted to do on a Christmas gift for one of her girl friends, so she said she would stay in the house and busy herself with needle and thread. Thus it came about that Bert took the smaller Bobbsey twins down to his father’s office.

They went in a trolley car, and, as they always did, Freddie and Flossie became very much interested in everything that happened, from the fat lady who could hardly get on to the scenes in the streets.

There were many trucks and wagons in one street, as the car came nearer that part of Lakeport in which Mr. Bobbsey’s lumberyard and office were situated. Finally the street became so crowded with wagons and automobiles that the car had to proceed slowly.

“Oh, Freddie, look!” suddenly called Flossie, pointing out of the window. A big auto-truck, piled high with crates, in which were chickens and ducks, had come to a stop alongside of the trolley car, and so close that, had the window been open, the Bobbsey twins could have reached out their hands and touched some of the fowls.

“I guess they’re getting in big shipments of ducks, turkeys and chickens ready for Christmas,” said Bert. “Look out there, Freddie!” he suddenly called, and, leaping from his place beside Flossie, Bert made a grab and pulled Freddie off the seat.

Only just in time, too, for at that moment the auto-truck, which had started off after being stalled, lurched to one side, and a corner of one of the chicken crates crashed through a car window, breaking the glass.

Bert had seen the crate of chickens shifting around as the truck started, and had guessed that it was going to slide over and crash against the trolley car, just as it did. So he pulled Freddie away in time.

Some of the passengers in the car screamed, and there was a shout by the conductor and motorman as the glass crashed in the electric vehicle.

And then a funny thing happened. One of the slats of the chicken crate on the auto-truck came loose, and in through the broken window fluttered a hen and a rooster. Right into the trolley they flew, the hen cackling and the rooster crowing!

“Oh, look! Look!” cried Flossie.

“Catch ’em!” shouted Freddie, pulling away from Bert and grabbing for the rooster.

But the rooster did not intend to be caught. Half running and half flying, he “scooted,” as Freddie called it, down to the end of the car, and, as the conductor had just opened the door to look out and see what was causing the blockade, the rooster made his escape.

The hen, however, did not seem to know how to get out. She fluttered around, cackling and making a great fuss. The men in the car laughed, and the women held their hands over their hats so the chicken would not light on them.

“Maybe she came in here to lay an egg!” suggested Flossie, laughing.

“I’m goin’ to catch her!” shouted Freddie.

“Get her and have a chicken dinner,” said the motorman.

By this time the car was in an uproar, most of the passengers enjoying the queer excitement. As for the hen, I do not think she liked it at all, though she had more room than in the crate.

The driver of the auto-truck was talking to a policeman about whose fault it was that the trolley window had become broken, and the motorman and conductor now joined in.

“I’ve got to get that chicken and rooster back,” said the truck driver. “I’ll be blamed for letting them get away.”

“And we’ll be blamed for having a window in our car broken,” said the conductor. “It was your fault.”

“It was not!” insisted the driver.

Cackling and fluttering, the hen raced about inside the trolley car, and Freddie tried to catch her, but could not. Several of the men made grabs for the lively fowl, but finally she saw the same open door by which the rooster had gotten out, and away she flew.

“She didn’t like it in here,” observed Flossie.

“I don’t blame her,” said a woman passenger, laughing. “Poor thing! Her nerves must be all on an edge.”

“Let’s go and see if they catch ’em,” suggested Freddie. But Bert said they had no time for that.

The slipping crate, which had broken the window, was finally pulled back on the truck. The slat was nailed fast so no other fowls could get out, and then the trolley car moved along. The conductor picked up the larger pieces of broken glass and pulled the curtain down over the window to keep out the cold air.

“My, you must have had some excitement,” said Mr. Bobbsey, when the children finally reached his office and told him of the accident. “I’m glad Freddie wasn’t cut by the broken glass.”

“I’m glad, too,” said the little Bobbsey boy.

Mr. Bobbsey read the letter Bert had brought him, and then the same worried look Bert had seen before came over his father’s face.

“Do you want me to tell mother anything?” asked Bert.

“No, except to thank her for sending me down this letter. Still, you might say to her that I think I shall have to go to Cedar Camp in a day or two.”

“Where’s Cedar Camp?” asked Bert.

“Where the Christmas trees grow,” his father answered, with a smile. “It’s where the Christmas trees grow that I hope to have to sell. I haven’t got them yet, and I’m going there to see what the trouble is. This letter is about the trees.”

“Oh, can’t we go and see where the Christmas trees grow?” begged Flossie.

“We like it in the woods,” said Freddie.

“I suppose you do,” his father answered, smiling. “But the woods in winter are very different from in summer. However, we shall not have any bad storms or severe weather for another month, I think. Perhaps I might be able to take my Bobbsey twins to Cedar Camp,” and he playfully pinched Flossie’s fat cheek.

“It would be nifty to go!” said Bert. “Do you really think you’ll take us?”

“We’ll talk it over to-night at home,” said his father. “Here, take Flossie and Freddie to the store and get them some hot chocolate,” he added, giving Bert some money.

The little Bobbsey twins liked the chocolate very much, but they were so excited, thinking about a possible trip to the North Woods, that they talked of nothing else.

“Do you really think you will have to go?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey of her husband that evening.

“Yes,” he answered. “Those Christmas trees have been lost somewhere between Cedar Camp and here, and I must find them, or I shall lose a lot on them. I will go to Cedar Camp in a few days.”

“And take us?” asked Bert.

“All of us!” cried Freddie.

Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey looked at one another.

“Would you like to go?” asked Mr. Bobbsey of his wife.

“Where could we stay?” she inquired.

“There is a large log cabin that one of my foremen used to live in,” Mr. Bobbsey answered. “The cabin is empty, and we could stay there as long as the weather did not get too cold, and as long as there were no bad storms. I really ought to go right to the woods, so that if I cannot get on the track of the lost shipment of Christmas trees I can start the men to cutting others. So we might as well all go.”

“Oh, what fun!” cried the Bobbsey twins.

Since that first fall of snow, which did not last very long, there had been no storms in the region of Lakeport, and Mr. Bobbsey thought he could get to Cedar Camp and return with his family before the really severe winter weather set in. He did not believe it would take long to look up the matter of the delayed shipment of the Christmas trees and straighten it out.

So it was settled, and a few days later, when plans had been completed, the Bobbsey family started for Cedar Camp.

CHAPTER VII—IN THE NORTH WOODS

“It’s just lovely to take a trip like this,” said Nan, as she leaned back in the automobile.

“Swell, I call it,” declared Bert.

Flossie and Freddie said nothing just then. They were too busy looking from the windows.

Mr. Bobbsey owned a large, closed automobile, which even had an arrangement for heating, and it was just the proper vehicle for a trip like this. It easily held all the Bobbseys and their baggage, which had been piled in to go with them.

It had not taken long to make preparations for the trip. Dinah and Sam would be left in charge of the Lakeport house, and would care for Snoop and Snap.

“I wish we could take our cat along,” sighed Flossie.

“And Snap would be just right for the woods,” said Freddie. “Everybody has a dog in the woods.”

“We haven’t time to bother with Snoop and Snap now,” said Mrs. Bobbsey, so the dog and cat had been left at home, as much to their sorrow as to that of the Bobbsey twins.

Cedar Camp was in what was called the “North Woods,” about forty or fifty miles from Lakeport. It was a wild, desolate region, especially in the winter. In summer many camping parties made the place more lively.

Mr. Bobbsey owned some timberland there, from which was cut some of the lumber he used in his business. And it was only this year that he had decided to go into the Christmas tree trade. He had ordered many hundreds of the small cedars, spruce, and hemlocks cut and shipped to him, some to Lakeport and others to a more distant and larger city.

But something had gone wrong with the carloads of trees. They had started from Cedar Camp all right, but that was the last heard of them.

“I can trace them from the North Woods end better than from down here,” Mr. Bobbsey had said, as a reason for making the trip.

The men who went into the woods to cut timber and Christmas trees had to stay in winter camps. They lived in log or slab cabins, and there were many of them scattered through the North Woods. It was in one of these cabins, which had formerly been used by a foreman and his family, that Mr. Bobbsey planned to have his wife and children stay for about a week. It would take him that long, he thought, to locate the missing Christmas trees.

And so now the Bobbsey twins were on the first part of their journey in the large, closed automobile. It was almost as comfortable as traveling in a Pullman railroad car, and it was much more fun, the children thought.

They had brought with them plenty of lunch, some extra wraps, and some blankets and bed-clothes.

“What shall we eat when we get to the North Woods?” asked Freddie, as he munched some cookies his mother passed to him and Flossie. “Shall we have any—chicken?”

“If we could ’a’ brought the one in the trolley car we could,” suggested Flossie. “Wasn’t she funny, an’ the rooster, too?”

“I wish we could ’a’ caught them,” Freddie murmured.

“Oh, I think we’ll have enough to eat without those fowls,” said their mother.

“They will if they like baked beans,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “The lumbermen have plenty of those. They bake big pans of them.”

“I’ll help mother cook,” offered Nan.

“There will be a woman at the camp to cook,” Mr. Bobbsey explained. “I wrote up and engaged the wife of one of the lumbermen,” he said. “I thought you’d like a little rest from looking after housework even in camp,” he said to his wife.

“Thank you, I will,” she said. “It will be quite nice to be in the woods in winter; especially the Christmas tree woods, where there is so much greenery.”

On went the automobile, driven by Mr. Bobbsey. Lakeport was left behind and they were on a country road. The weather was fine, with hardly a cloud in the sky, and Mr. Bobbsey was glad that he had taken his family on this little trip.

It looked as though they were going to have good luck all the way. Noon came and saw them more than half over their journey, and as yet no mishaps had befallen them. There was no tire trouble and the engine of the big automobile seemed glad to work as hard as it could going up hill and on the level with the Bobbsey twins.

Mr. Bobbsey planned to get to Cedar Camp before dark, and he would have done so but for a little accident. They had left the town of Bunkport, which was the last village before the North Woods was reached, when the motor began to chug in a queer manner.

“What’s that?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey. “One of the cylinders seems to be missing.”

The Bobbsey twins knew what this meant. That one of the parts of the automobile engine was not working properly.

“Oh, Daddy!” exclaimed Freddie.

“I guess the spark plug needs cleaning,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “But we won’t stop for that now. I think we can reach Cedar Camp, and then I’ll have plenty of time to take it out and look at it.”

But the automobile continued to go more and more slowly, and once, on a hill, it almost stopped.

“If we can get over the top we can coast down and soon be in Cedar Camp,” said Mr. Bobbsey, in answer to an anxious look from his wife.

The car did manage to climb the hill, and then it was easy to go down the other side. But there was still a farther distance to go than Mr. Bobbsey had thought. The night settled down, it became dark, and then, suddenly, when the car was on a rough road in a sort of lane cut through the evergreen trees, the engine, with a sort of cough and chug, stopped altogether.

“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey. “We’re stalled!”

“Looks like it,” said Mr. Bobbsey, preparing to get out and see what the trouble was.

“Where are we?” asked Bert, getting ready to follow his father and help if he could.

“We’re in the North Woods,” answered Mr. Bobbsey. “Several miles from Cedar Camp, I’m afraid.”

“It—it’s awful dark!” whispered Flossie. “Aren’t they going to turn on the lights?”

“There aren’t ever any lights in the woods ’ceptin’ fireflies, are there, Daddy?” asked Freddie.

“Only our auto lights,” answered his father. “Well, we may be able to travel soon.”

As he was getting out of the car into the dark road, a mournful, shrill cry that echoed all about sounded through the forest.

“What’s that?” gasped Nan, shrinking close to her mother. “Oh, what is it?”

CHAPTER VIII—A NUTTING PARTY

Mrs. Bobbsey was rather alarmed at what had happened to the automobile to cause it to stop. She was also worried, thinking perhaps they all might have to stay out in the woods all night, if they could not go on to camp. So when Nan asked the cause of the strange noise her mother did not at first answer.

The sound came again, just as Bert was getting down out of the car to go to his father, who had lifted the hood over the motor to see what was wrong, and the strange sound so startled this Bobbsey twin lad that he let go his hold of the side of the car and slid with a bump to the ground.

“Ugh!” grunted Bert, as he fell.

He grunted in such a funny way, and he looked so odd sitting there in the dusk, as if he did not know what had happened, that Flossie and Freddie laughed. And this laughter seemed to make them less afraid of the queer call of the woods.

“Hurt yourself, Bert?” asked his father, looking up from his task of throwing the gleams of a flashlight in among the parts of the automobile motor.

“No, sir,” Bert answered. “I just sat down sudden, that’s all. But what was that noise, Daddy? Is it——”

As if finding fault because the Bobbsey twins had come to Cedar Camp, once more the warning call came.

“There it goes again!” exclaimed Nan.

Flossie and Freddie shrank closer to their mother, and even Nan seemed a little afraid, but Mr. Bobbsey only laughed.

“That’s a hoot owl—or a screech owl, I don’t know which,” he said. “Anyhow, it’s only a bird with feathers and big, staring eyes. And, very likely, it’s looking down at us now and wondering what we’re doing in his woods.”

“Is the owl looking at us now?” asked Freddie, climbing away from his mother and venturing to the door of the car.

“Very likely,” his father said. “But the chances are you can’t see it. Owls keep pretty well hidden when there’s any daylight left.”

“Well, the light is fast fading,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “It’s getting dark very fast, Dick. And unless we get to camp soon—well, you know what may happen,” she said to her husband. “Do you think you can get the motor to going?”

“I think so,” he answered. “Bert, please come here and hold the light for me.”

Glad to be of help to his father, Bert arose from the ground, to which he had slipped when the sudden noise of the owl startled him, and went to hold the flash lamp. As he sent the beam moving about, in order to direct it just where his father wished it, there was a whirr and a flutter in the almost leafless branches of the trees overhead, and Flossie cried:

“There it is!”

“Yes, that’s Mr. Owl,” laughed her father. “He came up to look at us, but he doesn’t like our bright light, because it hurts his eyes. So he flew away. Now come on, Bert, and we’ll get the motor to running again. They’ll be anxious at Cedar Camp if we don’t get there soon.”

“Do they expect us?” asked Nan.

“Oh, surely,” said her father. “Hold the light steady, Bert.”

The Bobbsey twin lad did as requested, and after a little examination, his father exclaimed:

“I see what the trouble is—a loose wire on a spark plug! That’s easily fixed. We’ll be traveling on again in a few minutes.”

And so they were. Once the wire was fastened in place, the automobile could go again. Bert and his father got back in, there was a chugging and throb of the motor, and off they went through the woods, the two headlights gleaming along the dark road in the midst of the trees.

“I wish we could have arrived by daylight,” said Mr. Bobbsey, as he carefully steered the car. “Cedar Camp looks ever so much better then.”

“I’m glad to get here at all—so we don’t have to stay out in the woods all night,” said Mrs. Bobbsey.

“It would be fun to be out in the woods all night—if owls didn’t bite you—wouldn’t it, Flossie?” asked Freddie.

“Yes, I guess maybe,” answered the little girl. “But I’d rather be in our camp an’ have something to eat.”

“I guess I would, too,” agreed Freddie.

“Well, here we are, then. Cedar Camp!” suddenly cried Mr. Bobbsey, and, almost before the twins knew it, the car had turned from the dense woods and was in a clearing, or place where many trees were chopped down.

Around the clearing were many log cabins, and inside some of them, and outside others, lanterns were glowing, so the place was quite light, compared to the darkness of the forest.

“Cedar Camp!” cried Bert. “Is this it?”

“Yes,” his father answered. “Here we are—a little late, but better late than never! Now to find our cabin.”

He guided the car into the midst of the clearing, and the children could see the various cabin doors opening and men and women looking out.

“That you, Mr. Bobbsey?” a voice called.

“Yes, Jim Denton,” was the answer. “We’re here!”

“Thought maybe you’d given up and wouldn’t get here until to-morrow,” the voice went on.

As the car stopped the Bobbsey twins saw a tall, lanky man, wearing rough clothes, but whose face had a kind smile and whose blue eyes looked laughingly at them. He stood at the side of the car, peering in.

“We did have a little trouble,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “And one of your owls seemed to think we hadn’t any right in the woods. But here we are!”

“One of the owls, eh?” laughed Jim Denton, the foreman of the Christmas tree and lumber camp. “Well, they sure are queer birds! Make an outlandish racket, sometimes. But come on in. Your place is all ready for you, and Mrs. Baxter has had supper ready for some time.”

“That’s good!” exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey. “The children are half starved, I fancy.”

“Run your car over to the shed,” said the foreman to Mr. Bobbsey. “It’ll be safe there if it snows.”

“Had any snow up here yet?” asked the father of the twins.

“Not yet, but it may come any day. I heard you had a little down your way.”

“But it didn’t last very long,” Freddie chimed in. “We didn’t have much coasting at all!”

“You didn’t, eh?” laughed Jim, as he lifted out Flossie and Freddie, Bert and Nan being too big for this attention. “Well, when we do get snow up here we generally get a lot, and it may come any time. But the longer it holds off the better we can get out lumber and Christmas trees.”

“What about my Christmas trees?” asked Mr. Bobbsey. “That’s what I came up about.”

“It is queer about those trees,” said the foreman, as he helped Mrs. Bobbsey out. “We sent a lot off from here, but they must be stuck somewhere on the railroad down below. However, if they’re lost we can cut more. There’s plenty in the woods.”

Mrs. Bobbsey and the children waited until Mr. Bobbsey had put the car under a shed, and then, when he joined them, the family, led by the foreman, walked toward the largest cabin in the clearing. This was to be the home of the Bobbseys while they were at Cedar Camp.

“Well, I am glad to see you folks!” exclaimed Mrs. Baxter, who was to do the cooking and help Mrs. Bobbsey during the stay in camp. “I began to be afraid that something had happened.”

“A wire came loose,” said Freddie. “But daddy soon fixed it. And we heard an owl hoot. Do you like owls?”

“Well, not specially,” answered Mrs. Baxter, with a laugh.

“I don’t, either,” said Flossie.

The Bobbsey twins looked about the cabin that was to be their home for a time. It was a large one, and had been used by a former foreman with a large family. There were several bedrooms and it had many of the comforts of life, even though it stood in the North Woods.

Mrs. Baxter was the wife of one of the men employed in cutting down trees, and she had agreed to cook for the Bobbseys during their stay. She and her husband lived in one of the smaller cabins, and her grown daughter would cook for Mr. Baxter while his wife was with the Bobbseys.

“Now get your things off and sit right up to the table,” cried Mrs. Baxter. “The supper’s sort of spoiled, keeping so long.”

“I fancy the twins are hungry enough to eat almost anything,” said their mother. “I know I am!”

In spite of what Mrs. Baxter said, the supper proved to be very good indeed, and Flossie and Freddie passed their plates back so often to be filled again that their father said:

“My goodness! there won’t be anything left for breakfast.”

“Won’t there, Mother?” asked Freddie anxiously, pausing with his fork half way to his mouth.

“Oh, yes! Of course! Your father’s only joking!” she said, with a laugh. “But don’t eat too much.”

“I want just a little more,” begged Flossie.

“Can we go out and look at the camp after supper?” Bert wanted to know.

“You can’t see much by lantern light,” his father told him. “You’ll have plenty of chances to-morrow and the next few days.”

Bert found it too dark out of doors when he took a look after leaving the table, and decided to wait until morning.

The cabin was warm and cosy, and the Bobbsey twins thought they had never come to a more delightful place than Cedar Camp. They sat and talked a little while after the meal, and then, when Flossie and Freddie began to show signs of being sleepy, their mother said it was time for them to go to bed. Bert and Nan soon followed.

It seemed to be the middle of the night when Flossie, awakened from a sound sleep, heard a great noise and loud shouting outside the log cabin.

“Mother! Mother! What’s that?” she whispered.

“Only the lumbermen going to work,” Mrs. Bobbsey answered.

“Do they go to work in the night?” Flossie wanted to know.

“It’s almost morning—the sun will soon be up,” her mother told the little girl. “Keep quiet and don’t awaken Freddie.”

Flossie turned over and closed her eyes, thinking it strange that men should have to get up and go to work in the night. It was dark, and the stars were shining, as she could see by a glimpse through her window.

“I guess maybe they’re like Santa Claus,” thought Flossie. “They have to go out to cut Christmas trees in the dark, same as St. Nicholas comes to our house in the dark on Christmas Eve.”

Content with this thought, the little girl fell asleep, not to awaken again until it was broad daylight. She found that all were up save Freddie and herself, but the youngest Bobbsey twins soon joined the others at the breakfast table.

“Oh, goodie!” cried Freddie, when he understood that Mrs. Baxter was baking buckwheat cakes and had maple syrup to pour over them. “That’s what I like!”

“He can’t like ’em all, can he, Mother?” cried Flossie. “I can have some pancakes, can’t I?”

“Hush! There’ll be plenty for all of you!” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “What will Mrs. Baxter think?”

“I’ll think they’re good and hungry; and that is what I like to see when I’m baking cakes,” laughed the good-natured cook. She was almost as nice as Dinah, Freddie whispered to Flossie.

“An’ if she has a birthday we—we’ll give her something,” whispered Flossie.

“Yes,” agreed Freddie, holding out his plate for another cake.

After breakfast Mrs. Bobbsey took the children for a walk in the woods around the camp, while Mr. Bobbsey went to talk with some of his lumbermen about the missing Christmas trees.

“Don’t go too far away,” he called to his wife.

“Why not?” she asked.

“Because the woods here are rather wild, and you and the children might get lost. There aren’t many trails, paths, or roads. Keep close to camp.”

“I will,” she promised.

It was wonderful and beautiful in the North Woods, even though winter was at hand. Most of the birds had gone, and about the only trees that had any leaves on were the oaks. An oak tree holds many of its leaves all winter, the old ones being pushed off in the spring as the new ones come on. But there were so many spruce, pine, hemlock, and cedar trees growing all about—trees which remain green from one year to the other—that the woods were not as bare and dreary as are most forests. Cedar Camp was indeed a green Christmas camp, and a most lovely place.

“We’ll have lots of fun here!” cried Freddie, running to the edge of a little hill.

“Lots of fun!” agreed Flossie. “We’ll——” and then she stopped suddenly, for Freddie did a queer thing—or at least a queer thing happened to the little fellow. His feet seemed to slide out from under him, and down the hill he went, almost as though sliding on the ice!

“Oh, look! Look!” cried Flossie. “What made him do that?”

“I slid! I slid! Oh, I had a slide! I’m going to slide it again!” cried Freddie, jumping up and scrambling to the top of the hill again. “Come on, Flossie!”

“What makes him slide, Mother?” asked Flossie, as she saw her little brother go down the hill standing up, just as he and his small sister had often done on a snowy, icy slope.

“It’s the pine needles,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “The ground is covered with the long, brown, smooth pine needles, and they make a slippery carpet. You may slide on them. If you fall you won’t be hurt.”

Soon the two smaller Bobbsey twins were having great fun sliding down the slippery pine-needle-covered hill, and Bert and Nan also took their turns.

But after two or three slides Bert found something on the ground that made him exclaim in delight and run to his mother to show her.

“Look!” he cried. “A chestnut! Are there chestnuts in these woods?”

“Yes, I did hear your father say something about them,” Mrs. Bobbsey replied.

“Oh, let’s hunt for some!” cried Nan.

“We’ll help!” added Flossie and Freddie, deserting the pine-needle slide for the joys of nutting.

But though the twins looked in all directions they found only a few scattered chestnuts.

“The squirrels have picked up most of them,” said Jim Denton, coming along a little later. “But there’s a chestnut grove not far away, up Pine Brook, and there ought to be plenty left if you don’t wait too long.”

“Oh, Mother! may Nan and I go chestnutting?” asked Bert. “I want to get a lot!”

“Will it be safe for them?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey of the foreman.

“Oh, yes,” answered Jim. “It isn’t more than a mile and the trail is plain. I’ll tell ’em how to go and show ’em the way.”

And so, the next morning, Bert and Nan started off on a chestnut party, little dreaming of the strange things that were to happen to them and the other Bobbsey twins.

CHAPTER IX—SAWMILL FUN

Flossie and Freddie had teased to be allowed to go nutting with Bert and Nan, especially when the smaller Bobbsey twins learned that their brother and sister were to take a lunch and perhaps stay all the rest of the day in the woods.

“Oh, I want to go nutting!” cried Flossie.

“So do I!” wailed Freddie. “An’ I want to eat my dinner under the Christmas trees!”

“We can’t have any fun if they come with us,” objected Bert, in a whisper to his mother.

“We’ll take them some other time,” added Nan. “They’d get tired and want to come back before we found any nuts, Mother.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Bobbsey, “perhaps they would. You can take them some other time, I suppose.” Then, as she knew Flossie and Freddie would be disappointed, Mrs. Bobbsey called to them:

“Come, little twins, we’ll go down to the sawmill and see the big logs sawed up into boards. Maybe you can ride on the log carriers.”

Flossie and Freddie knew what this was, and to them there was no better fun. Also they liked to see the big, jagged-tooth saw whizzing about and cutting its way through the logs with such a queer, ripping, buzzing sound.

“Oh, if we can go to the sawmill that will be ’most as much fun as nutting,” agreed Freddie.

“Will you bring us some nuts?” asked Flossie.

“Yes,” promised Nan. “And next time we go we’ll take you.”

So the nutting party was arranged. Taking lunch was a sort of afterthought on the part of Bert.

“What’ll we do if we get hungry?” he had asked his mother.

“We’ll take something to eat in our pockets,” Nan had said.

“I’m going to eat mine outside—sitting on a log!” laughed Bert.

“Smarty!” laughed Nan. “I’ll catch you next time!”

Mrs. Baxter put up for the children a good lunch, more than enough for two meals, Mrs. Bobbsey said.

“But we’ll get awful hungry in the woods,” Bert remarked. “And we don’t want to have to eat the nuts we get.”

True to his promise, Jim Denton, the foreman, showed the older Bobbsey twins where to take the path that led up along Pine Brook and deeper into the forest about Cedar Camp, where the chestnut trees were growing.

“Good-bye!” called Flossie and Freddie, as they stood on the porch of the log cabin, waving to Bert and Nan, who started off with their lunch to be gone the rest of the day on the nutting party.

“Good-bye,” echoed the older Bobbsey twins, and then they were soon lost to sight in the turn of the path along Pine Brook, which led deeper into the North Woods.

“Now for some sawmill fun!” called Mrs. Bobbsey. “We’ll go down and see the little saw chew up the big logs.”

In addition to sending to market logs for telegraph poles and the masts of ships, Mr. Bobbsey’s men in the North Woods also sawed up trees into planks and boards which were sold in the neighborhood. Besides this there was the Christmas tree trade, but that only took place at this time of year, around the holidays.

Flossie and Freddie were too small to think much about the missing Christmas trees, which their father had come to camp to see about. All they were anxious for was to have some fun, and going to the sawmill was part of this.

The sawmill was farther down on Pine Brook, where that stream widened out and was dammed up to make a waterfall. Part of the waterfall went through a flume, or sort of wooden canal, and the water, falling down a shaft, or wooden tunnel standing on end, turned a turbine wheel.

A turbine wheel is quite different from the ordinary mill wheel you may have seen. In fact you can not see the turbine wheel at all, for it is closed in at the bottom of the water shaft. It is small, but very powerful, and it was this kind of wheel which turned the saw machinery in Mr. Bobbsey’s Cedar Camp mill.

Before the smaller Bobbsey twins reached the mill they could hear the ripping, tearing sound of the saw as it cut its way through the logs, slicing them into boards as your mother slices the loaf of bread with the carving knife.

“Good morning, Mrs. Bobbsey—also little twins!” called Foreman Tom Case, who had charge of the sawmill. “Did you come to buy some lumber this morning?”

Flossie and Freddie knew Tom Case, for he had, at one time, worked in the lumberyard of their father in Lakeport, so it was meeting an old friend to see him here.

“Do you want one or two million feet this morning, Flossie?” asked the jolly sawman. “And will you take it with you or have it sent?”

“I guess we’ll just take some sawdust for Flossie’s doll,” laughed Freddie. This was a standing joke between the sawmill man and the little twins. Tom Case was always trying to sell a big lot of lumber to Flossie and Freddie, and they always said all they wanted was a little sawdust.

“Oh, shucks! you aren’t any kind of customers to have around a lumber camp,” laughed Mr. Case. “Where’s the rest of the family?” he asked Mrs. Bobbsey.

“Bert and Nan have gone nutting,” their mother answered. “So we came down here to see what was going on.”

“Well, we’re sawing up a lot of logs to-day,” said the head man of the mill. “Here, you twins sit right down on this soft place, and you can watch everything.” Mr. Case spread a horse blanket on top of a pile of soft, fragrant sawdust, and on this Mrs. Bobbsey and the smaller twins sat down.

They saw the lumber men float logs down into the pond at one side of the dam and near the flume through which the water dropped to turn the turbine wheel. Into these logs a big iron hook was driven. The hook was fast to a chain, and the chain was wound around a drum, or big roller.

When a man threw over a lever that started the machinery, the drum turned, the chain was wound up and the log was pulled from the water up on land and ready to be put on the moving carriage which fed it into the teeth of the saw.

“Could we ride on the logs?” cried Flossie, as she saw them pulled, or “snaked,” as it is called, out of the pond and up on shore.

“Yes! Yes!” chimed in Freddie.

“Oh, no,” his mother answered. “You might roll off, and if the log turned over, and got on your legs, it would break them. It wouldn’t be safe—see there!”

One of the lumbermen had jumped on top of a log that was being pulled along by the chain. For a time he kept his balance, and was given a ride. But as Mrs. Bobbsey cried out, the log struck a stone and turned over, and if the lumberman had not jumped he would have been thrown.

He leaped to one side with a laugh, and ran into the mill.

“That’s what might have happened to you, only you might not have gotten off so easily,” said Mrs. Bobbsey.

“I’d like to ride,” sighed Flossie.

“So would I!” added Freddie.

“Let ’em ride on the log carriage. That’s safe if they don’t get too near the saw, and you can ride with them and watch,” said Tom Case.

“All right,” agreed Mrs. Bobbsey.

The log carriage was a movable platform of framework, on which the logs rested as they were sawed into boards. The logs were rolled up on the carriage by men, when the machinery had been stopped and the big buzz saw was no longer whirring around. Once a log was fastened in place, Tom Case pulled a lever, and the turbine wheel began to turn the saw, and also move forward the carriage. The carriage, or framework carrying the log, moved slowly forward by means of cogwheels underneath, so that it fed the log into the teeth of the saw which ripped off wide planks and boards.

Mrs. Bobbsey and the little twins sat on the far end of the carriage, and began to ride forward with it. Of course if they had stayed on too long they would have been carried up against the dangerous saw just as the log was. But before this would happen they could step off, as the carriage moved slowly, like an automobile just before it stops.

“Oh, this is fun!” cried Flossie, as she dragged her feet through little piles of sawdust.

“’Most as much fun as nutting!” agreed Freddie. “I’m going to be a lumber-saw man when I grow up.”

“Then you aren’t going to be a fireman?” asked his mother, for that had been Freddie’s great ambition.

“Nope; I’m going to have a sawmill,” he decided. But as he changed his mind about every other day concerning what he intended to do when he grew up, his mother did not take him seriously this time.

She and the twins rode on the log carriage until the big tree length was almost sawed through, and then she helped Flossie and Freddie off. With a final zip and clatter the board was sawed off the side of the log. Then the carriage would move back its full length, the log would be shifted over to enable the saw to cut a new place, and the work would start over again.

The log carriage moved backward, when no sawing was being done, much faster than it moved forward. And the little Bobbsey twins liked this backward ride very much, as they went fairly whizzing along.

“All aboard!” called Tom Case, as he prepared to send the carriage on its return trip. Mrs. Bobbsey and Flossie and Freddie took their places.

There was a rattle and a rumble, and back they shot, the twins shouting in glee and kicking aside the piles of sawdust. Thus they had great fun at the sawmill, and they did not want to come away when the noon whistle blew and it was time for lunch. For there was a steam engine in Cedar Camp, as well as the turbine wheel, and this steam engine had a whistle which the engineer blew to tell the men to stop for dinner.

After dinner Mrs. Bobbsey went to lie down, and after cautioning Flossie and Freddie not to go near the sawmill without her, she left the smaller twins to amuse themselves near the cabin. Their father was out with some of his men looking after Christmas trees, and as Bert and Nan had gone nutting, Flossie and Freddie looked about to find some amusement of their own.

“Let’s play sawmill!” proposed Freddie, as he and Flossie wandered down near Pine Brook, where it ran over the dam, making a waterfall.

“All right,” agreed the little girl. “But what’ll we have for a saw?”

Freddie looked around and noticed a wheelbarrow not far off.

“That’ll do,” he said. “We’ll turn it downside up, and I’ll turn the wheel for a saw and you can hold sticks against it and make believe they’re being sawed up.”

“All right,” agreed Flossie. “That’ll make a fine saw.”

They went over to the wheelbarrow, and then a new idea came to Freddie.

“Oh, Flossie!” he cried, “you sit in it and I’ll wheel you down to the edge of the brook. We’ll have our sawmill there, and make believe to snake logs out of the water like Mr. Case did.”

This suited Flossie exactly, and soon she had taken her place in the wheelbarrow. Freddie grasped the handles, but his sister was almost more of a load than he had bargained for. Still he was a sturdy little chap, and he managed to stagger on, wheeling Flossie toward the brook.

There was a smooth place on a little knoll near the brook where Freddie intended to set up his wheelbarrow sawmill. Toward this place he wheeled Flossie, and all might have gone well had it not been for the fact that the ground was covered with those slippery pine needles.

Freddie managed to wheel his sister up the slope, and he was just going to set the barrow down and tell Flossie to get out so he could turn it over and make a saw of it, when his feet slipped. He lurched forward, gave the wheelbarrow a push, and, an instant later, it turned over, and Flossie, sliding on the slippery, brown pine needles, began to go down the slope and straight toward the brook, just back of the dam.

Freddie, too, sat down hard and suddenly, but though the breath was knocked out of him for a moment, he managed to pick himself up and to cry:

“Mother! Mother! Come quick! Flossie’s fallen into the brook and she’ll be carried over the dam!”

And, as he called, into the water at the foot of the pine needle hill splashed poor Flossie Bobbsey!

CHAPTER X—A SUDDEN STORM

While Flossie and Freddie were having such fun at the real sawmill, and before Freddie had, by accident, upset Flossie down the pine needle bank into the brook above the mill dam, Bert and Nan were trudging along through the woods on their way to the chestnut grove, about which Jim Denton had told them.

“Aren’t you glad we came to Cedar Camp, Bert?” asked Nan.

“I sure am!” answered her brother. “It’s like having two vacations in the same year. We had fun out West, and we’ll have fun here.”

“We can have a party when we get back, and roast the chestnuts,” suggested Nan.

“I hope we get a lot,” went on Bert, kicking aside the pine cones and dried leaves. “We’ll want some for Flossie and Freddie.”

“Yes, and for daddy and mother,” added Nan. “They like chestnuts, too.”

The day had started as a bright and sunny one, though it was colder up here in the North Woods than down in Lakeport. But Bert and Nan were warmly dressed, and they were so accustomed to being out of doors that a little cold did not bother them.

But though the sun had shone brightly when they had started on their nutting trip, they had not gone far before the sky began to be overcast with clouds. Not that Bert and Nan minded this. They were too busy looking for chestnut trees and thinking what a good time they were having to mind the weather.

For it was fun just to walk through the woods and breathe the sweet, spicy odors of the pine and cedar trees. The ground underfoot was thickly carpeted with dried leaves and pine needles, so that the footfalls of the older Bobbsey twins made scarcely any sound as they walked along.

It was so quiet that the children heard many sounds in the forest which was all about them. They were following a path that led along Pine Brook, and Jim Denton had said that if they kept to this path they would come after about a mile’s walk to a grove of chestnut trees.

“And if you don’t find any nuts there, keep on a little farther,” the lumberman had said. “The squirrels and chipmunks can’t have taken all of them.”

So interested were Bert and Nan that they paid little attention to the weather. In fact, they could scarcely see the sky at times. This was because the cedar and other trees were so thick overhead.

As they were going along the path where the pine needles made a thicker carpet than usual, Bert, who was in the lead, came to a sudden stop.

“What’s the matter?” asked Nan, shifting from one hand to the other the bundle of lunch she carried.

“I thought I heard something,” said Bert in a low voice.

A moment later there was no doubt of this, for both he and his sister heard a grunting noise in the bushes, and then they heard the rustle of dried leaves and the snapping of twigs.

“Oh, Bert! Maybe it’s a bear!” cried Nan, clinging to her brother.

“A—a bear!” gasped Bert. He hardly knew what else to say.

“Oh, look!” gasped Nan. She pointed toward a bush, and, coming out from under it, was a little animal, somewhat larger than a rabbit, but with different kind of fur, small ears, and with a tail that seemed to have rings of fur around it.

“It’s a little bear!” gasped Nan. “Oh, Bert! we’d better run back to camp before the big bear comes.”

Bert looked at the furry animal, whose bright eyes peered at the Bobbsey twins, and then Nan’s brother laughed.

“I know what it is!” he said. “It’s a raccoon. I can tell by the rings on its tail.”

“A raccoon!” gasped Nan. “Will it—will it hurt us?”

“No,” answered Bert, and this was borne out a moment later, for with a snorting grunt the raccoon turned and scurried away into the bushes.

“There!” said Bert. “He’s gone!”

“I’m glad of it,” returned Nan, with a sigh of relief. “I don’t like raccoons when I’m chestnutting.”

“They’re nice!” declared Bert. “I wish I could see him again.”

But the raccoon did not show itself, probably being just as much frightened at having seen the Bobbsey twins as Nan was at getting a glimpse of the ring-tailed creature.

Over this little fright, the Bobbsey twins walked on again, and soon they had reached the grove that the foreman had told them about.

“This must be the place—there are chestnut trees here,” said Bert. His father had taught him how to tell the more common sorts of trees by means of their leaves and bark.

“Well, let’s look for chestnuts,” proposed Nan.

With sticks the children began poking among the leaves, turning them over, for the little brown nuts, when the frost has popped them out of their prickly shells, have a great trick of hiding under the leaves.

“Oh, I’ve found one!” cried Nan. “Two—three! Oh, Bert, I’ve found three!”

She held out her hand with three shining brown nuts in it.

“Ought to be a lot more than that here,” said Bert, still poking away among the leaves. “There’s lots of trees and fresh burrs here. I guess the squirrels and chipmunks have been here too.”

“Oh, I’ve found two more! I’m beating you!” laughed Nan, as she picked up more nuts.

“I’ve found one, anyhow, and it’s a big one,” cried Bert, as he picked up his first. “But there aren’t as many as I thought there would be.”

The children continued to pick up a few nuts at a time, but there were not so many scattered over the ground as the lumberman had led them to expect.

“There’s the chap who’s been taking the nuts!” suddenly cried Bert.

“Who?” asked Nan, looking up after stooping to pick two of the brown prizes from a bursted burr.

“That squirrel!” cried Bert, pointing to one of the big-tailed gray fellows, sitting on a tree and looking down at the Bobbsey twins. “He and the chipmunks can soon clean up a chestnut grove.”

Just then a red squirrel, one of the most noisy chatterers of the woods, caught sight of the children and began to “scold” them. Oh, what a racket he made, his thin tail jerking from side to side as he gave his shrill cries! Bert and Nan laughed at him.

“He’s had his share of nuts,” said Bert, “and he’s mad ’cause we’re taking some, I guess. But we aren’t getting as many as we’d like.”

“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!

“Oh, Bert!” cried Nan. “It’s a blizzard! Oh, shall we ever get back to Cedar Camp and to mother?”

CHAPTER XI—OLD MRS. BIMBY

“Pooh!” exclaimed Bert Bobbsey, as he ran through the half-blinding snowstorm toward Nan. “This isn’t anything! It’s only what they call a squall. I s’pose they call it that because the wind howls, or squalls, like a baby. Anyhow, I’m not afraid! It’s fun, I think!”

By this time he had reached Nan’s side, the two having been separated when the sudden storm burst. And now that Nan saw Bert near her and noticed that he had his bag of lunch, as she had hers, she took heart and said:

“Well, maybe it won’t be so bad if we can find a place to stay, and can eat our dinner.”

“Of course we can!” cried Bert. “There’s lots of places to stay in these woods. We can find a hollow tree! I’ll look for one!”

“Oh, don’t!” cried Nan, as Bert moved away from her. “I don’t want to go into a hollow tree. There might be owls in ’em!”

“Well, that’s so,” admitted Bert. “I’m not afraid of owls,” he said quickly, “but of course their claws could get tangled in your hair. I’ll look for another place—or I can make a lean-to. That’s what the lumbermen and hunters do.”

“I think it would be just as easy to get under one of the big, green Christmas trees,” suggested Nan. “Look, hardly any snow falls under them.”

She pointed to a large cedar tree near them, and, as you may have noticed if you were ever in the woods where these trees grow, scarcely any snow drifts under their low-hanging branches.

“That would be a regular tent for us,” said Nan.

“Yes,” agreed Bert, peering through the storm at the tree toward which his sister pointed. “We could get under one of those. But I think maybe we’d better not stand still. Let’s walk on.”

“But toward home!” suggested Nan. “We oughtn’t to go any farther gathering nuts, Bert.”

“No, I guess not,” he agreed. “Anyhow, we have quite a lot. We’ll start back for Cedar Camp. And when we get hungry we’ll stop under a Christmas tree and eat. I’m beginning to feel hungry now,” and Bert felt in his overcoat pocket to make sure that the lunch, which he had put there, was still safe. It was, he was glad to find, and Nan had hers.

“Yes, we’ll eat in a little while,” she said. “But we’d better start back to camp.”

So the two older Bobbsey twins started off in the blinding snowstorm, little realizing that they were going directly away from camp instead of toward it. The wind whipped the snow into their faces, so that they could see only a little way in advance. And as they were in a strange woods, with only a small path leading back to camp, it is no wonder they became lost.

But we must not forget that we have left Flossie and Freddie, the smaller Bobbsey twins, in trouble. In playing sawmill Freddie had tipped Flossie out of the wheelbarrow, and the little girl had rolled down the slippery pine-needle hill into the stream just above the dam.

“Come quick! Come quick!” Freddie had cried. “Flossie’ll go over the waterfall! Oh, hurry, somebody!”

He knew enough about waterfalls to understand that they were dangerous; that once a boat or a person got into the current above the falls they would be pulled along, and cast over, to drop on the rocks below.

Poor Flossie was too frightened to cry. Besides, as she fell in her head went under the water, and you can’t call out when that happens. Flossie could only gurgle.

Luckily, however, there were several lumbermen on the bank of the stream, floating the logs down to be snaked out by the hook and chain, and sawed into boards. One of these men, Jake Peterson, was nearest to Flossie when the little girl tumbled into the stream.

“I’ll get you out!” cried Mr. Peterson.

He dropped the big iron-pointed pole with which he was pushing logs and ran toward the little girl, while Freddie, trying to do all he could, slid down the slippery hill, as it was a quicker way down than by running.

Into the water with his big rubber boots waded Mr. Peterson, and it was not a quarter of a minute after Flossie had fallen in before she was lifted out.

“Oh! Oh!” she managed to gasp and gurgle, as she caught her breath, after swallowing some of the ice-cold water. “Oh, am I dr-dr-drowned?”

“I should say not!” answered Mr. Peterson. “You’ll be all right. I’ll take you to mother.”

By this time Mrs. Bobbsey and Mrs. Baxter had rushed out of the log cabin, and Tom Case came from his sawmill. Several other lumbermen, hearing Freddie’s excited cries, came running up, but there was nothing for them to do, as Flossie was already rescued.

“What has happened?” cried Mrs. Bobbsey, as she saw her little girl, dripping wet, in the arms of Mr. Peterson.

“She fell in,” explained the lumberman. “She wasn’t in more than a few seconds, though. All she needs is dry clothes!”

“I—I dumped her in!” sobbed Freddie. “But I didn’t mean to. We were playin’ sawmill with the wheelbarrow, and I gave Flossie a ride, an’ I slipped on the pine needles, and she rolled down the hill.”

“Never mind, dear! You didn’t mean to,” answered his mother, soothingly. “We must get Flossie to bed and keep her warm so she won’t take cold.”

With Mrs. Baxter’s help, this was soon done, and in a short time after the accident Flossie was sitting up in a warm bed, sipping hot lemonade and eating crackers, while Freddie sat near her, doing the same.

Unless Flossie caught cold there would be no serious results from the accident. But Mrs. Bobbsey used it as a lesson for Freddie, telling him always to be careful when on a pine-needle-covered hill, near the water especially.

Flossie was enjoying her importance now, and she was begging her mother to tell her a story, in which request Freddie joined, when Mrs. Bobbsey, looking out of the window, was surprised to see how dark the clouds had become all of a sudden.

“I believe we are going to have a snowstorm,” she said. And a few minutes later the snow came down so thick and fast that the lumbermen had to stop work, because they could not see where to drive the horses, nor to guide the logs down the stream to the mill.

“My, what a storm!” exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey, as she went to the window to look out. “A regular blizzard!”

“We can have fun coasting down hill!” laughed Freddie. “And Flossie can be out to-morrow, can’t she, Mother?”

“Yes, I think so,” answered Mrs. Bobbsey, hardly thinking of what she was saying. “I hope Bert and Nan started back from the chestnut grove before this storm broke,” she said. “If they are out in this it will be dreadful! I must see if daddy has come back,” she added, for her husband had gone to see about the missing Christmas trees. “If Bert and Nan are out in this storm they will lose their way, I’m sure.”

And this is just what Bert and Nan did. Clutching their bundles of lunch, and with their bags of chestnuts in their hands, the two older Bobbsey twins were struggling onward through the storm. They were warmly dressed, and it was not as cold as weather they had often been out in before. But they had seldom been out in a worse storm.

“Hadn’t we—maybe we’d better stop and rest and eat something, Bert,” suggested Nan, after a while.

“Maybe we had,” he agreed, half out of breath because it was hard work walking uphill and against the wind. And almost before they knew it the children were going up a hill, though they did not remember having come down one on their trip to the chestnut grove.

They found a sheltered place under a big cedar tree, and, crawling beneath its protecting branches, they sat on the bare ground, where there was, as yet, no snow. The white flakes swirled and drifted all about them, but the thick branches of the tree, growing low down, made a place like a green tent.

“It’s nice in here,” said Bert, as he opened his bundle of lunch.

“Yes, but we ought to be at home,” said Nan.

“We’ll go home as soon as we eat a little,” said her brother.

But after they had each eaten a sandwich and some cookies, and Bert had cracked a few chestnuts between his teeth and had found them rather too cold and raw to be good, the twins decided to go on.

Out into the storm they went, away from the shelter of the friendly tree. The storm was worse, if anything, and, without knowing it, Bert and Nan had become completely turned around. Every step they took carried them farther and farther away from their home camp. And they had journeyed quite a distance from the cabin before finding any chestnuts.

“Oh, Bert!” Nan exclaimed after a while, half sobbing, “I can’t go a step farther. The snow is so thick, and it’s so hard to walk in. And the wind blows it in my face, and I’m cold! I can’t go another step!”

“That’s too bad!” Bert exclaimed. “Maybe we’re almost back to camp, Nan.”

“It doesn’t look so,” his sister answered, trying to peer about through the swirling flakes.

“Wait a minute!” suddenly cried Bert, as there came a lull in the blast of wind. “I think I see something—a cabin or a house.”

“Maybe it’s our cabin,” suggested Nan, “though I don’t remember any of the trees around here. There aren’t any cut down here as there are in camp.”

“Well, I see something, anyhow,” and Bert pointed to the left, off through the driving flakes. “Let’s go there, Nan.”

Through the storm the children struggled, hand in hand. They reached a log cabin—a lonely log cabin it was, standing all by itself in the midst of a little clearing in the woods.

“This isn’t our camp, Bert!” said Nan.

“No,” the boy admitted. “But somebody lives here. I see smoke coming from the chimney. I’m going to knock.”

With chilled fingers Bert pounded on the cabin door.

“Who’s there?” asked a woman’s voice above the racket of the storm.

“Two of the Bobbsey twins!” answered Nan, not stopping to think that everyone might not know her and her brother by this name.

“Please let us in!” begged Bert. “We’re from Cedar Camp! Who are you?”

“I’m Mrs. Bimby,” was the answer, but neither Bert nor Nan recognized the name. A moment later the cabin door was opened, and an old woman confronted them. She looked at the two children for a moment; then, “Did you bring any news of Jim?” she asked.

CHAPTER XII—MR. BOBBSEY IS WORRIED

Bert and Nan Bobbsey stood on the step of the log cabin, while Mrs. Bimby, the old woman, held open the door. The snow blew swirling in around her, and a wave of grateful warmth seemed to rush out as if to wrap itself around the cold twins. For a moment they stood there, and Bert was just beginning to wonder if the old woman was going to shut the door in the faces of his sister and himself.

“Did you bring any news of Jim?” asked old Mrs. Bimby.

“Jim?” repeated Bert.

“Do you mean Jim Denton, the foreman at Cedar Camp?” asked Nan.

“No, child! I mean my Jim—Jim Bimby. He went off to town just before this awful storm. But land sakes! here I am talking and keeping you out in the cold. Come in!”

It was cold. Bert and Nan were beginning to feel that now, for the storm was growing worse, and it was now late afternoon. The sun was beginning to go down, though of course it could not be seen on account of the snow and clouds. The Bobbsey twins had wandered farther and longer than they had thought. But at last they had found a place of shelter.

“It’s just like me to keep you standing there while I talk,” said Mrs. Bimby. “I’m sorry. But I’m so worried about Jim that I reckon I don’t know what I’m doing. Come in and get warm, and I’ll give you something to eat.”

“We’ve got something to eat, thank you,” said Nan. “But we would like to get warm,” and she followed Bert inside the log cabin, as Mrs. Bimby stepped aside to make room for them to enter.

“Got something to eat, have you?” questioned the old woman. “Well, you’re lucky, that’s all I’ve got to say. I’ve only a little, but I expect Jim back any minute with more, though a dollar don’t buy an awful lot these days.”

“Does Jim live here?” asked Bert, as he walked over to a stove, in which a fire of wood was burning, sending out a grateful heat.

“Of course he lives here,” said Mrs. Bimby. “He’s my husband. He’s a logger—a lumberman.”

“Oh, maybe he works for my father!” exclaimed Nan. “Mr. Bobbsey, you know. He owns part of Cedar Camp.”

“No, I don’t know him,” said Mrs. Bimby, “though I’ve heard of Cedar Camp. They got a lot of Christmas trees out of there.”

“That’s what we came up about,” explained Bert. “Some Christmas trees my father bought to sell didn’t come to Lakeport, and he came up here to see about them. We came with him—and my mother and the other twins.”

“Good land! are there more of you?” asked Mrs. Bimby in surprise. “You two are twins, for a fact. But——”

“There’s Flossie and Freddie,” interrupted Nan. “We left them back in camp while we went after chestnuts.”

“We got some, too,” added Bert. “But we sort of got lost in the storm. Do you s’pose your husband could take us back to Cedar Camp?” he asked Mrs. Bimby. “My father will pay him,” he said, quickly, as he saw Mrs. Bimby shaking her head.

“Maybe Mr. Bimby works at the sawmill,” suggested Nan.

“No,” said the old woman, “Jim is a logger and wood cutter, but he doesn’t work at Cedar Camp. That’s too far off for him to go to and get back from.”

“Too far off!” echoed Nan, and she began to have a funny feeling, as she told Bert afterward.

“Yes,” resumed Mrs. Bimby. “Cedar Camp is away over on the other side of the hills. You’re a long way from home. You must have taken the wrong road in the storm.”

“I—I guess we did,” admitted Bert. “But couldn’t your husband take us back?”

Again Mrs. Bimby shook her head.

“Jim, my husband, isn’t home,” she said. “He went over to town just before the storm to get us something to eat. But now I don’t see how he’s going to get back,” and she went to a window to look out at the storm.

It was getting much worse, as Bert and Nan could see. The wind howled around the corners of the log cabin of Jim Bimby, the logger, and the blast whistled down the chimney, even blowing sparks out around the door of the wood-burning stove.

“Yes, it’s a bad storm,” went on the old woman. “I wish Jim was back, and with some victuals to eat. When you twins knocked I thought it was Jim. I wish he’d come back, but he’s an old man, and he may fall down in the snow and not be able to get up. He isn’t as strong as he used to be. I’m certainly worried about Jim!”

“Oh, maybe he’ll come along all right,” said Nan, trying to be helpful and comforting.

“If he doesn’t pretty soon it’ll be night, and in all this storm he never can find his way after dark. But you children take your things off and sit up and have a cup of tea with me. I’ve got some tea and condensed milk left, anyhow.”

“We can’t take tea unless it’s very weak,” said Nan, remembering her mother’s rule in this respect.

“All right, dearie, I’ll make it weak for you twins, though I like it strong myself,” said Mrs. Bimby. “My, what a storm! What a storm!” and she drew her shawl more closely around her shoulders as the wind howled down the chimney.

Bert and Nan took off their warm things, laying their packages of lunch and the bags of chestnuts on the table. Nan saw the old woman go to a closet, and the glimpse the Bobbsey girl had of the shelves showed her that they contained only a little food.

“Bert and I have some of our lunch left,” said Nan.

“And you can have some, if you want to,” went on Bert. “We put up a pretty good lunch, and there’s more’n half of it left.”

“Bless your hearts, my dears,” said Mrs. Bimby. “I wouldn’t take your lunch. You’ll need it yourselves. I’ve a little victuals left in the house, though if my Jim doesn’t get back soon there won’t be much for to-morrow. My, what a storm! What a storm!”

The small log cabin seemed to shake and tremble in the wind, as though it would blow away. And the snow was now coming down so thickly that Bert and Nan could see only a short distance out of the window. There was little to see, anyhow, save trees and bushes, and these were fast becoming covered with snow.

Mrs. Bimby busied herself about the stove, putting the kettle on so she could make tea, and Bert and Nan watched her. The Bobbsey twins were wondering what would happen, how they could get home, and whether or not their father and mother would worry. Nan looked about the cabin. She did not see any beds, but a steep flight of stairs, leading up to what seemed to be a second story, might provide bedrooms, Nan thought. The cabin was clean and neat, and she was glad of that.

“I do hope Jim comes,” murmured Mrs. Bimby, as she poured the boiling water on the dry tea leaves in the pot. “I do hope he isn’t storm-bound!”

Bert and Nan hoped the same thing, for, somehow, Bert thought if Mr. Bimby came along he would take the twins back to Cedar Camp.

“Now sit up, dearies, and have some weak tea, and I’ll take mine strong. I need it for my nerves,” said the old woman.

And while Bert and Nan had thus found shelter from what turned out to be one of the worst storms ever remembered in the country around Cedar Camp, the other Bobbsey twins, Flossie and Freddie, were safe at home with their mother. Flossie was now cozy and warm after her dip into the water.

“There’s your father!” exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey, as she heard someone stamping off the snow at the front door. “I hope he has Bert and Nan with him.”

But when Mr. Bobbsey came in alone and heard that the older twins had not come back from their nutting trip, a worried look came over his face.

“Not back yet!” he exclaimed. “Why, it’s getting dark and the storm is growing worse! I must start out after them with some of the lumbermen. They must be lost!”

CHAPTER XIII—OLD JIM

“Don’t you think Bert and Nan will be along in a little while?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey of her husband, as she crossed the big front room in the log cabin to meet him.

“Be in soon!” he exclaimed. “Why, they’ve been gone too long now, and——”

Mrs. Bobbsey, not letting Flossie and Freddie see her, made a motion with her hands toward her husband. Then he understood that his wife did not want him to frighten the smaller twins by letting it become known how worried he was about Bert and Nan.

“Oh—yes,” said Mr. Bobbsey, as he understood his wife’s idea. “Oh, yes, Bert and Nan will be along soon now.”

“I’ll be glad!” exclaimed Freddie.

“So will I,” added Flossie, from her place on one of the bunks in a bedroom opening out of the living room. “I want some chestnuts.”

“Hello, little Fat Fairy! what’s the matter with you?” asked her father, noticing for the first time that Flossie was in bed. “Sick?” he asked.

“I just fell in the water,” Flossie explained.

“I dumped her in, but I didn’t mean to,” Freddie said.

“Oh! Up to some of your fireman tricks, were you?” laughed Mr. Bobbsey, for he saw, by a glance at his wife, that the small twins were now in no danger.

“No, Daddy, I wasn’t playing fireman,” Freddie answered, though that was one of his favorite pastimes. “We were going to make a sawmill.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Mr. Bobbsey. “Well, whatever you do, keep away from the big buzz saw,” he warned. “And now,” he went on in a low voice to his wife, so Freddie and Flossie would not hear, “we must do something about Bert and Nan.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “I’m worried about them, but I didn’t want Flossie and Freddie to know. Oh, to think of their being out in this storm!”

“It is pretty bad,” her husband admitted. “I was caught in it, and hurried back. I didn’t think the children would go far away.”

“Nor I,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “I suppose they didn’t find chestnuts where they expected to, and wandered on. Are there any wild animals in the woods?”

“Well, no, none to speak of,” her husband said slowly. “You don’t need to worry about that. But I’ll get Jim Denton, and some of the men, and we’ll start right out after Bert and Nan.”

“I wish I could come with you!” exclaimed his wife, as anxious and worried as was Mr. Bobbsey.

“You’ll have to stay here with Flossie and Freddie,” he said. “I’ll soon find Bert and Nan and bring them back.”

“I hope so,” murmured his wife, but as she glanced out of the window and saw how dark it was getting and how fast the snow still came down and heard how the wind howled, it is no wonder the mother of the older Bobbsey twins was worried. So was Mr. Bobbsey.

“I’ll go right away and get Jim and some of the men, and we’ll start out on the search,” said Mr. Bobbsey, having warmed himself at the stove. “We must not wait!”

“No,” agreed Mrs. Bobbsey. “I’ll stay and amuse Flossie and Freddie.”

The smaller Bobbsey twins, of course, did not worry because Bert and Nan had not yet come home. Flossie and Freddie were having too much fun playing a little game on the foot of Flossie’s bed. Mrs. Baxter, the housekeeper, had started the game for the children by bringing in some funny wooden blocks her husband had cut out on one of the long winter evenings that were sometimes so dreary in Cedar Camp.

The blocks could be fitted together to make a house, a bridge, a boat and many other play objects, and Flossie and Freddie enjoyed playing with them, for which their mother was glad. She really was so worried that she could not very well talk to them or tell them stories.

Telling his wife to keep up her courage and not to worry too much, Mr. Bobbsey went out into the storm again.

“Where is daddy going?” asked Flossie, hearing the door shut.

“He’s going to bring back Bert and Nan—and the chestnuts,” said Mrs. Bobbsey, quickly. She knew the smaller twins would think more of the chestnuts than anything else, just at present.

“Oh, I like chestnuts!” cried Freddie. “I’m going to boast ’em an’ roil ’em!” he exclaimed.

“Listen to him, Mother!” laughed Flossie. “He said ‘boast an’ roil,’ an’ he meant roast an’ boil ’em, didn’t he?”

“I think he did,” said Mrs. Bobbsey, trying not to let the small twins see how worried she was.

“Oh, Freddie Bobbsey, look what you did!” suddenly cried Flossie. “You knocked over my steamboat!” For Freddie had toppled over the pile of blocks that Flossie had erected on the foot of her bed.

“Never mind. He didn’t mean to,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “You can make another boat, Flossie.”

“An’ I’ll help,” offered Freddie.

Thus the two smaller Bobbsey twins amused themselves, with little thought of Bert and Nan except, perhaps, to wonder when they would come home with the chestnuts.

Meanwhile Mr. Bobbsey hurried through the fast-gathering darkness and the storm to the cabin of Jim Denton. Like the other men in the Christmas tree and lumber camp, the foreman had stopped work when the storm came with such blinding snow and a wind that turned bitter cold toward night.

“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.”

They all stopped and listened. Above the blowing of the wind and the swishing of the fast-falling snowflakes, a faint and far-off voice could be heard.

“Help! Help!” it called.

“There they are!” shouted one of the lumbermen.

“That doesn’t sound like either Bert or Nan,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “But it may be someone who started to bring them back to camp and he, too, became lost.”

They all listened again, and once more came the call, but still faint and far away.

“Help! Help!”

“It’s over here!” cried Jim Denton. “Over to the right!”

Through the storm and darkness the rescue party hurried, sending out calls to tell that they were on the way. Now and again they heard the cry in answer, and it sounded nearer now.

At last Mr. Bobbsey saw a dark figure huddled in a heap near a pile of snow, which had drifted around a large rock.

“Here’s someone!” cried Mr. Bobbsey.

A moment later he and the lumbermen were standing over the figure of a man, partly buried in the snow.

“Why, it’s Jim! Old Jim Bimby!” exclaimed Jim Denton. “I know him. He lives several miles from here. He must have been lost in the storm, too. Jim! Jim!” he cried. “What you doing here?”

“I—I started to town for victuals,” said old Jim Bimby, in faint tones. “The storm was too much for me. I was about giving up.”

“We heard you call,” said Tom Case.

“Did you see anything of two small children?” eagerly asked Mr. Bobbsey. “Twins, a boy and a girl! Did you see them?”

Anxiously he bent over to catch the old logger’s answer.

CHAPTER XIV—SNOWED IN

Having been out in the cold and storm so long, Jim Bimby seemed to have become half frozen. He did not appear to understand what Mr. Bobbsey asked him. The old logger staggered to his feet, helped by some of the men from Cedar Camp, and looked about him.

“What’s the matter?” asked Old Jim in a faint voice. “Did something happen? I remember startin’ off to get—to get something to eat for my wife and me. Then I fell down, tired out, I guess.”

“I guess you did!” exclaimed Tom Case. “And if we hadn’t found you, you’d have been done for. We must get you to shelter.”

“Take him around behind this big pine tree a minute,” suggested Jim Denton. “He’ll be out of the wind there, and we can give him a drink of the hot tea we brought along.”

Some hot tea, mixed with milk, had been put in a thermos bottle and taken with the party to have ready for Nan and Bert, should the Bobbsey twins be found. Now this hot drink would do for poor old Jim Bimby.

Some of the men managed to light lanterns they carried, though it was hard work on account of the wind and snow, and the whole party, including the rescued man, went to the side of the big pine tree, which kept off some of the storm.

“There! I feel better,” said Old Jim, as he swallowed the warm drink.

“And now can you tell us whether or not you saw my two children, Nan and Bert—the Bobbsey twins?” again asked their father anxiously.

Old Jim shook his head.

“No,” he answered. “I didn’t see any children. I came straight from my cabin, over the hill trail, to go to the village to get some food. The cupboard is almost bare at my house. I didn’t think it was goin’ to storm, and I was all taken aback when it did. I kept on, but I must have lost my way.”

“Guess you did,” said Mr. Peterson. “And you’re not likely to get back on it in this storm, either.”

“What!” cried Old Jim. “You mean to say I can’t keep on to the store and take some food back to my wife?”

“Not in this storm!” said Tom Case. “You’re miles from the store now, and more miles from your cabin. You’d best come to Cedar Camp with us, and in the morning, when the storm is over, you can go on again. Your wife has enough food to last until morning, hasn’t she?”

“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.

“Oh, I do hope they’re all right!” said Mrs. Bobbsey.

“Of course they are!” her husband told her. “They’ll be here in the morning.”

“With chestnuts?” asked Flossie, who, with Freddie, had been awakened from an early evening sleep by the return of their father.

“Yes, they’ll bring chestnuts,” replied Mr. Bobbsey, trying to smile, though it was hard work, for he was really very much worried, as was his wife.

However, they did not let Flossie and Freddie know this. And as Mr. Bobbsey ate the warm supper which Mrs. Baxter set out for him, he told about the finding of Mr. Bimby, who had been taken to the cabin of Tom Case, there to spend the night.

“Can we see him?” cried Flossie, who did not seem any the worse for having fallen into the water.

“Maybe he can tell us a story about a real bear,” added Freddie, for he had been rather disappointed, since coming to Cedar Camp, because no one could tell him where to find a bear.

“Maybe he can,” said his father. “You shall see Old Jim, as the boys call him, in the morning.”

Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey did not pass a very happy night. They were much worried about the missing Nan and Bert, and though he tried to sleep, after Flossie and Freddie had gone to Slumberland, Mr. Bobbsey found it hard work. So did his wife.

More than once during the night, as they awakened after fitful naps and heard the wind howling around the cabin and the snow rattling against the windows, one or the other would say:

“Oh, I hope Bert and Nan are all right!”

And the other would say:

“I hope so!”

Morning came at last, but it was not such a morning as all in Cedar Camp had hoped for. They had expected the storm to be over, so that a searching party could again set out to find Bert and Nan.

But instead of the storm being over, it was even worse than the night before. A regular blizzard had set in, the snow coming out of the north on the wings of a cold wind. Great drifts were piled high here and there through the camp clearing, and when Freddie and Flossie looked from the window they could hardly see the sawmill.

“Oh, oh!” squealed Freddie. “Look, Flossie! Just look!”

“We’re snowed in!” cried Flossie. “Oh, what fun we’ll have!”

“It’s just like Snow Lodge!” added Freddie, remembering a time spent there, when several adventurous happenings had taken place.

“Yes, I’m afraid we are snowed in,” said Mr. Bobbsey, with an anxious look out of the window. “But I hope it will not last long. Well, here come Tom Case and Old Jim. I must see what they want,” and he went to the door to let them in.

Meanwhile the snow came down steadily, and as Flossie had said, that part of the Bobbsey family at Cedar Camp was fairly snowed in. As for the other members of the family, Bert and Nan, we must now try to find out what had happened to them.

CHAPTER XV—A BARE CUPBOARD

Having finished drinking the weak tea which Mrs. Bimby brewed for them, eating with it some of the lunch they had brought along, Bert and Nan sat in the lonely cabin in the woods wondering what would happen next. There was no other cabin or house near them, and as they heard the wind howl down the chimney and moan around the corners, and heard the rattle of hard snow against the window, the older Bobbsey twins were glad they had found this shelter.

“Do you think we’ll be able to start back soon, Mrs. Bimby?” asked Nan, as she helped the old woman clear the tea things off the table.

“Back where, dearie?”

“Back to our camp.”

“Oh, not to-night, surely,” said Mrs. Bimby. “You won’t dare venture out in this storm. It’s getting worse, and black night is coming on. You just stay here with me. I can make up beds for you, and I’ll be glad to have you, since my Jim isn’t coming back, I reckon.”

“What do you think has become of him?” asked Bert, who was interested in looking at a gun that hung over the mantel.

“Well, I reckon he got to the village, but found the storm so bad he didn’t dare to start back,” answered Mrs. Bimby.

Of course she did not know what had happened to Old Jim any more than Jim knew that the older Bobbsey twins were in his own cabin.

“But Jim’ll be here in the morning,” said his wife. “And I do hope he’ll bring in something to eat. If he doesn’t——”

She did not finish what she started to say, and Nan asked:

“Will you starve, Mrs. Bimby?”

“Well, not exactly starve, for I s’pose a body could keep alive on tea and condensed milk for a while. But we’ll be pretty hungry. There’ll be three to feed instead of just one,” the old woman went on.

“We’ve some food left,” said Bert. “And we can cook our chestnuts. We got quite a few before the storm came.”

“Bless your hearts, dearies!” exclaimed Mrs. Bimby. “You may be able to eat chestnuts, but my old teeth are too poor for that. But I dare say we’ll get along somehow, even if the cupboard is almost bare. Don’t you want to go to bed?”

“Oh, it’s too early,” objected Bert.

“Have you any games we could play?” asked Nan.

She and her brother were in the habit of playing simple games at home before going to bed, and it seemed natural to do it now. After the first shock of feeling that they were lost in the snow storm had passed, the Bobbsey twins were quite content. They felt that their father and mother must realize that they were safe.

“Games, dearie?” asked Mrs. Bimby. “Well, seems to me there’s some dominoes around somewhere, and I did see a checker board the other day. Jim used to play ’em when the loggers came in. I’ll see if I can dig ’em out.”

She rummaged through an old chest and brought to light a box of battered dominoes. But as several were missing it was hard to play a good game with them. As for the checkers, the board was there but the pieces, or men, were not to be found.

“But you can take kernels of corn,” said Mrs. Bimby. “I’ve often seen my Jim do that.”

“Checker men have to be of different color,” said Nan, “and corn is all one color, isn’t it?”

“There are red ears,” suggested Bert. “Don’t you remember we saw some when we were in the country?”

“Oh, yes!” exclaimed Nan.

“That’s what I was going to say,” remarked Mrs. Bimby. “I can give you some yellow kernels and some red ones, and you can play checkers if you like.”

This suited Nan and Bert, and though it was hard to make “kings” by placing one grain of corn on top of another, they managed to go on with the game, using pins to fasten two red or two yellow kernels one on top of the other when the king row was reached.

Grains of corn or some other cereal, or perhaps colored stones, were, very likely, the first sort of “men” used in the ancient game of checkers, and Bert and Nan got along very well in this way. Mrs. Bimby kept stoking the fire, putting on stick after stick of wood as it burned away, and the cabin was kept warm and cozy.

Outside the storm raged, the wind blew, and the snow came pelting down. But at times the older Bobbsey twins were so interested in their checker game that they hardly heard the sounds outside the log cabin.

At last Mrs. Bimby, with a look at the clock, said:

“It’s after nine, dearies; hadn’t you better go to bed? My Jim won’t come to-night, that’s sure, and I don’t believe any of your folks will come for you.”

“They don’t know where we are,” said Nan.

“No more they do, dearie. Well, I’ll show you where you’re to sleep. I’m glad I’ve got covers enough for two extra beds.”

There were three rooms in the second story of the log cabin. Two of the rooms were small, each one containing a little single cot. The other room was larger, and had a bed in it. Mrs. Bimby slept there, and she gave Bert and Nan each one of the smaller rooms. There was a window in each of the bedrooms, and being above the warm downstairs room, where a hot fire had been blazing all evening, the sleeping chambers were more comfortable than one would have supposed.

Bert and Nan were so sleepy that they did not lie awake long after getting to bed. As there were no pajamas for Bert and no night-gown for Nan, the children slept in their underclothes, taking off only their shoes and outer garments.

In spite of the fact that he fell asleep soon after going to bed, because he was tired from the day’s tramp after chestnuts, Bert was awakened in the middle of the night by hearing Nan call:

“Mother, please give me a drink!”

It was a request Bert had often heard his sister make before, and now he realized that she was either half awake, and did not remember where she was, or else she was talking in her sleep. He raised up on his elbow and listened. Again Nan said:

“I want a drink!”

Bert knew how hard it was to try to go to sleep when thirsty, so he got up and, having noticed on coming to bed the evening before a pail of water on a chair in the upper hall, he brought Nan a dipper full. Mrs. Bimby had left a lantern burning, so it was not dark in the cabin.

“Oh, Bert! I dreamed I was back home,” said Nan, as she took the drink her brother handed her. “Thank you!”