“And it isn’t much use walking on,” returned Flossie; and her voice trembled.  “We don’t know where we’re going.”

Still she followed as Freddie trudged on.

“You walk behind me, Flossie,” he said, “and that will keep some of the wind off you.”

“Thank you, Freddie,” was Flossie’s answer.  “But I’d rather walk by the side of you.  You—­you can hold my hand better then.”

Hand in hand the twins went on.  The wind seemed to blow all ways at once, and always in the faces of the tots.  All at once, as Freddie made a stop to get his breath, he gave a shout.

“What’s the matter?” asked Flossie.  “Do you see something?”

“Yes, I guess it’s a house,” Freddie answered.  “Look!”

He pointed to something that loomed up black in the midst of the cloud of snowflakes.

“I guess we’ll be all right now,” Flossie said.  “We’ll go in there and ask our way home.”

But when they reached the black object they found that it was only an old shed which had been used to store some meadow hay.  The door of the shed was shut, but Freddie tried to open it.

“We can go in there to get warm,” he said, “if I can open it.”

“I’ll help you,” said Flossie.

The two were struggling with the latch of the door when they saw some black object coming toward them out of the storm.

“Oh, maybe it’s a cow,” said Flossie.

“It’s a man,” cried Freddie, and so it proved.  A tall, nice-looking man, his black beard white with snow, walked toward the children.

“Well, well!” he cried.  “What does this mean?  Such little tots out in this storm!”

“We’re lost!” said Flossie.

The strange man laughed.

“Lost?  So am I!” he cried.  “It isn’t the first time, either.  I’ve been lost a whole lot worse than this.  Now, as we’re lost together, we’ll see if we can’t get found together.  Here, we’ll go in out of the storm a minute and you can tell me about yourselves.”

With one pull of his strong arms he opened the shed door and went inside with Flossie and Freddie.

CHAPTER XXII

HAPPY DAYS

“This is better,” said the man, as he closed the door to keep out the wind and snow.  “This isn’t exactly a warm house, but it will do until we get our breath.  Now tell me how you came to be lost.”

“We were out taking some things to a poor lady,” said Freddie, “and she told us some nice stories.”

“One was about a little red hen,” put in Flossie.

“Yes,” went on Freddie.  “And when we saw it was snowing we came out in a hurry and took the wrong turn, I guess.  We couldn’t see any houses, and we hollered and nobody heard us, and then I saw this meadow grass and I knew where we were.”

“So this is the meadows?” asked the strange man.

“Yes, sir, this is the meadows,” said Freddy.