“What’s the matter?” asked Flossie.

“I can’t see any houses, or anything,” answered her brother.  “I—­I guess we’ve come the wrong way, Flossie.  I don’t know where we are.”

“Do you mean we—­we’re lost, Freddie?”

“I’m afraid so.”

CHAPTER XXI

THE STRANGE MAN

The two Bobbsey twins stood in the snowstorm, looking at each other.  Though they were both brave they were rather worried now, for they did not know which way to go to get home.  If there had been no snow it would have been easy, but the white flakes were so thick that they could hardly see ten feet ahead of them.

“What are we going to do, Freddie?” Flossie asked.

“Well, I don’t know,” he answered.  “I guess we’ll just have to keep on walking until we come to a house, and then we can ask which way our home is.  Maybe somebody in the house will take us home.”

“But we can’t see any houses.  How can we ask?” said Flossie, and her voice was trembling.

Indeed, the storm was so thick that no houses were in sight.  There might have been some near by, but the children could not see any.

Nor were any persons to be seen passing along the street.  If there had been, one of them might easily have set the twins right.  But the truth of it was that Flossie and Freddie had taken the wrong turn in coming out of Mrs. Todd’s house, and instead of walking toward their home they had, in the confusion of the storm, walked right away from it.  Every step they took put them farther and farther away from their own house.

And now, as they learned later, they were on the far edge of the city of Lakeport, beyond the dumps, on what was called the “meadows.”  In Summer this was a swamp, but with the ground frozen as it was it was safe to walk on it.  But no houses were built on it, and there were only a few lonely paths across this meadow stretch.

In the Summer a few men cut a coarse kind of hay that grew on the meadows, but as hay-cutting is not done in Winter no one now had any reason for going to the meadows.

“Well, we mustn’t stand still,” said Flossie, after a bit.

“Why not?” asked Freddie.  “Can’t you stand still when you’re tired?”

“Not in a snowstorm,” Flossie went on with a shake of her head.  “If you stand still or lie down you may go to sleep, and when you sleep in the snow you freeze to death.  Don’t you remember the story mother read to us?”

“Yes,” answered Freddie.  “But I don’t feel sleepy now, so it’s all right to stand still a minute while I think.”

“What are you thinking about?” asked his sister.

“I’m trying to think which way to go.  Do you know?”

Flossie looked all about her.  It was snowing harder than ever.  However, it was not very cold.  Indeed, only that they were lost, the Bobbsey twins would have thought it great fun to be out in the storm.