“Ye—­yes, I—­I guess so.”

“Hum!  You’re part of the Bobbsey twins, aren’t you?” asked the old woodchopper, who made a living by cutting firewood and kindling wood in the forest, where he lived by himself in a lonely cabin all the year around.

“Yes, we’re the littlest ones,” answered Flossie.  “Bert and Nan are bigger, but they fell off, too.”

“So falling from an ice-boat doesn’t go by sizes,” laughed the old man.

Then, taking turns, Flossie and Freddie told the story of the runaway ice-boat, and of having left the rest of their family several miles away on the ice.

“We tried to stop, but we couldn’t,” said Flossie.  “And, oh, dear!  I wonder where Daddy and Mother are now.”  Flossie spoke as though it would not take much to make her cry.

“Don’t worry,” said Uncle Jack, as every one around Lakeport called him.  “If your father and mother don’t come for you I’ll take you home.”

“It—­it’s a long way to walk,” said Freddie with a sigh.  “And I guess Flossie is hungry.  Aren’t you?” he asked of his little sister.

“Well—­a little,” admitted the blue-eyed girl twin.

“How about you, little man?” asked Uncle Jack.

“I—­I guess I am, too,” Freddie admitted.  “Have you got anything to eat?”

“Well, maybe we can find something in my cabin,” said the old man.  He had left his axe sticking in a tree near where the ice-boat had run into the snow bank, and was leading the children along by either hand.  Flossie and Freddie looked up into his kindly, wrinkled face, the cheeks glowing red like two rosy apples, and they knew they would be well taken care of.  Uncle Jack was a fine, honest man, and he was always kind to children, who, often in the Summer, would gather flowers near his lonely log cabin.

In a little while Flossie and Freddie were seated in front of a stove, in which crackled a hot fire, eating bread and milk, which was the best the woodchopper could offer them.  But they were so hungry that, as Freddie said afterward, it tasted better than chicken and ice-cream.

“Haven’t you got any little girl?” asked Flossie after a while.

“No, I haven’t a chick or a child, I’m sorry to say.”

“My father would give you a chicken if you wanted it,” said Freddie.  “And some days we could come and stay with you.”

“That last part would be all right,” said the old man with a smile; “but I haven’t any place to keep a chicken.  It would get lonesome, I’m afraid, while I’m off in the forest chopping wood.  But I thank you just the same.”

“Didn’t you ever have any children?” asked Flossie, taking a second glass of milk which the kindly old man gave her.

“Never a one.  Though when I was a boy I lived in a place where there were two children, I think.  But it’s all kind of hazy.”

“Where was that?” asked Freddie, brushing up the last of the bread crumbs from his plate.