The Big Storm continued…
“Danny, is this so?” asked Mr. Rugg, who knew some of his son’s mean ways, and had tried in vain to break him of them. “Have you Bert’s dog?”
“Well, maybe it is his dog. It was dark when he followed me home last night, and I tied him in that shack.”
“I guess he wouldn’t have followed you if you hadn’t coaxed him,” said Bert.
“Well, I couldn’t drive him back,” went on Danny, but the Bobbseys believed that he had deliberately coaxed Snap off to make trouble.
“Let the dog out at once,” said Mr. Rugg to his son, and Danny had to do so, though he was angry and sullen over it.
How Snap leaped about his master and mistress and their cousins! How delightedly he barked! And his tail wagged to and fro so fast that it looked like two tails, as Freddie said afterward.
“Poor Snap!” said Bert, as he patted his pet “And so you were tied up all night? It was a mean trick!” and his eyes flashed at Danny, who looked on sneeringly.
“I am sorry for this, Bert,” said Mr. Rugg. “If I had known Danny enticed away your dog I would have made him bring it back. Now I am going to punish him. You go back home to-day, Danny. You can’t stay in the lumber camp any longer.”
Danny felt badly, of course, but it served him right.
The Bobbseys and their cousins lost no time for getting back to Snow Lodge with Snap, who was hugged so much by Flossie and Freddie that Dinah said:
“Good land a’ massy! Dat dog must be mos’ starved, an’ yo’-all is lubbin him so dat he ain’t time to eat a sandwich. Let him hab some breakfast, an’ den hug him!”
“Oh, but we like him so!” cried Flossie.
So Snap was restored, and Danny was sent home out of the woods, so there was no more trouble from him.
In the days that followed, the Bobbsey twins at Snow Lodge had many more good times. They made snow forts, and had snow-battles, they made big snow men and threw snowballs at them, and went on sleigh rides, or skated and ice-boated and played around generally, to their hearts’ content.
Occasionally the two older boys went on long tramps with Henry Burdock as he visited his traps. They invited him to come to Snow Lodge, but he said:
“No, I’m never coming there until I can prove to my uncle that I never touched his money. Then I’ll come.”
One day, when Bert and Harry had been in the woods with the young hunter, he said to them:
“Don’t go far away from Snow Lodge tomorrow, boys.”
“Why not?” asked Bert.
“Because I think we’re in for a big storm, and you might easily get lost again. Unless I’m mistaken, it’s going to snow hard before morning.”
Henry Burdock proved a true weather prophet, for when the Bobbseys and the other got up the next morning the ground was covered with a mantle of newly-fallen snow, and more was sifting down from the clouds. The wind, too, was blowing fiercely.
“It’s going to be a bad storm,” said Mr. Bobbsey, looking out after breakfast. “Luckily we have plenty of wood and plenty to eat.”
The wind howled around Snow Lodge while the white flakes came down thicker and faster.
“Maybe we’ll be snowed in,” said Nan.
“That would be fun!” cried Bert.