ittle girl. I hardly ever cry since I've growed up."

"No, I guess that's right," Freddie said. "She's 'bout as brave as me,"
he went on to the man.

"I'm sure she is, and I'm glad to hear that. You are both brave little
tots, and I'm glad I found you. Whew!" he exclaimed, as the wind blew a
cloud of snowflakes into his face, "this storm is getting worse. I'll
have some melted-snow tears on my own cheeks, I think."

The strays kept on through the drifting snow, and, all the while, it was
getting harder and harder for Flossie and Freddie to walk. The piles of
snow were up to their knees in some places, and though the man easily
forced his way through them, because he was big and strong, it was not
so easy for the little Bobbsey twins to do so.

Pretty soon they came again to the rounded pile of snow that the two
tots had mistaken for a little house. The white flakes had covered the
hole Freddie had made with his stick.

"Let's stop and see if the muskrat is home yet," proposed the little
boy.

"What muskrat?" asked the man.

"The one that lives in here. I started to dig in so Flossie and I could
get out of the storm, and the muskrat put his head out and looked at us.
I guess he was surprised."

"We were surprised, too," said Flossie. "At first I thought it was a
little bear."

"Ha! Ha!" laughed the man. "And so you dug into a muskrat's meadow-house
to get out of the storm? Well, that was a good idea, but I guess if you
had gone in the muskrats would have run out. But it was a good thing you
found the shed, and I'm glad I also found it. We will soon be home, I
hope."

They lingered a moment, as Freddie wished to see if the muskrat would
come out; but the creature was, very likely, away down deep in his house
of sticks and mud, eating the sweet, tender roots of the plants he had
stored away before Winter set in.

Once more the man led the Bobbsey twins onward.

Pretty soon Flossie began to lag behind. Her little feet went more and
more slowly through the piles of snow, and once she choked back a sob.
She wanted to cry, but she had said she was brave and scarcely ever shed
tears, and she was not going to do it now. Still, she was so tired and
cold and altogether miserable that she did not know what to do. Freddie,
too, was hardly able to keep on, but he would not give up.

At last, however, the man looked down at the two little ones, and he
noticed that they were really too tired to go farther. He stopped an