twelve," the welcome lights in Sagasta-weekee
were seen, and the happy, tired excursionists were glad to hurry off and
half bury themselves in the beds and pillows filled with the downy
feathers of geese killed at the spring hunts of years before.

Winter Adventures of Three Boys--by Egerton R. Young

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

SUDDEN TRANSITION FROM WINTER TO SPRING--INTERESTING PHENOMENA--SAM'S
LAST GREAT RUN WITH HIS DOGS--HIS UNIQUE ADVENTURE--THE OPEN WATER--HIS
NOVEL RAFT--SUCCESSFUL CROSSING--FRANK AND ALEC'S DUCK-SHOOTING TRIP--
THE MIGHTY NELSON--A HUNTER'S PARADISE--RETURNING UNDER DIFFICULTIES--
ONE MORE SHOT AT THE WILD GEESE--FRANK AND RUMOURS--THE FAIR VISITANTS
AT SAGASTA-WEEKEE.

Very rapid indeed is the transformation from one season to another in
the high latitudes. When the long, steady winter breaks it does so with
a suddenness that is startling to a person who observes it for the first
time. The snow disappears with a marvellous rapidity. The ice, that
was like granite in hardness and several feet thick on the great lakes,
becomes dark and porous, and in spots literally seems to rot away. Then
along the great cracks, where it had burst by the power of the terrible
frost some months before, it now opens, and soon great fields of it
become floating masses on the waters. Under the action of the brilliant
rays of the sun it becomes disintegrated, and falls away in crystals
that are of various sizes and as long as the ice is thick. This
crystallisation begins early, and makes the ice very dangerous and
uncertain. The Indians call this slivering of the ice, candling.

Sam had a narrow escape from drowning on account of this rapid
transformation of the ice. He had harnessed his dogs and gone out on
the shining lake for a run. The snow had all disappeared from the land,
and so the great icy expanse was all that was left for an invigorating
run with the dogs. The frost had been keen in the night, and so
everything was firm and hard when he left in the morning. The day was
an ideal April one. The sun was full of brightness, and the south winds
were full of warmth. For miles and miles Sam recklessly dashed along
with his splendid dogs. He was sorry at the thought that he was so soon
to forever leave them behind in that North Land. Soon some pools of
water on the ice into which his dogs splashed brought him to his senses,
and he turned for the home run to Sagasta-weekee, now perhaps twenty