Clearly defined and unmistakable is this our winter. CHAPTER XI. The coming of spring--Fishing by torch-light--Sudden beauty of the springtime--Seeding--Foul weeds--Hospitality of Ontario farmers. The reign of winter on the lake shore, with its hummocks of broken ice, seems longer than it really is. Those who observe it day by day are glad when March comes, with its lengthening days and its presage of spring. Soon we have a few days’ sunshine, and perhaps a warm pervasive rain. The change thus made is scarcely credible to those who have not seen it. In a few hours, with the sea beating upon this ice, before so unassailable, the banks shrivel the ice away. Here and there along the shores and among the sands obstinate pieces of ice still linger for a few days, half covered by the sands, which have thus far protected them. But spring, joyous spring, is near. The ubiquitous crow’s caw is once more in the air. Troops of wild ducks convene in the open spaces of our marshes and ponds. Sportsmen, before the light of day, creep up to the open water, and the first morning rays are greeted with a steady bang, bang. The sportsman has his reward. Should the lake surface be rough, so that the ducks cannot rest there, they are forced to fly back and forth, and the shooting goes on all through the day. The fishing time arrives almost before we have expected it. You are made aware of it, perhaps, by a neighbor coming to borrow a spear. Now, nightly, pitch-pine torches will flare and blaze, casting a lurid light along our creeks. Stand at a distance and watch the fishers. See how their forms are increased in size until they look like veritable giants in the haze of the blazing light-jack. Hear their shouts as they race up and down the stream for suckers, pike, mullet and eels. “Here he goes”; “there’s another”; “plague on your jack--you missed that big fellow”; “hand me that spear, you are no good as a sportsman.” So the fun and jollity goes on far into the evening. In this land, where the four seasons are clearly and distinctly defined, spring comes to us with a beauty unknown to those who dwell in lands which do not possess such unmistakable divisions of the year. If the winter was snowy, frosty and stormy, it had in its place sufficient enjoyments to make us love it; but now that it has passed, budding spring, with its ever-present deep green, comes to us with a bound, with a new pleasure of anticipation, added to its reality after it is once here.