128 MEN I HAVE FISHED WITH. 



"Nothing but a pair of woolen mittens; your hands 

 will freeze without them. I'll put up all the grub we 

 want. Meet me here about nine in the morning and 

 we'll start." 



During the night about two inches of snow fell. The 

 morning was still and clear, and the snow was soft and 

 dry. Garry carried the basket and axe, while I 

 shouldered the long spear up past schoolhouse and along 

 the railroad, which then came down to the lower ferry, 

 to the mill pond away up by the red mill. The snow 

 was blinding as we faced the morning sun, and it also 

 reflected every sound. The far-off crows seemed close 

 at hand, a little sapsucker pecking on a tree made a great 

 rapping, and we could hear what the men were saying 

 down at the mill. "Why is it so still after a fall of 

 snow?" I asked. 



It's always that way after a snowstorm," he answered, 

 and I went along not entirely satisfied with his laconic 

 answer, but accepted his statement of fact. Some philos- 

 ophers give us equally lucid explanations and take a 

 whole volume to do it in. 



"A week from now the ice will be too thick to spear 

 eels," he said, "and it would take half an hour to cut a 

 hole. It's just right now, nearly four inches, and no one 

 has been spearing here this year. Down yonder, in the 

 bend, is where they bed; the water is deep there." 



All eels bed in the mud in cold weather, and an eel 

 spear for soft bottom has a stout central tine barbed on 

 both sides; then come flexible tines, about five on each 

 side, with barbs on the inside only. The tines are nearly 

 a foot in length, and radiate from the pole-stock in a 

 flat plane, which is some 10 inches wide at the lower end. 

 Rigged with a light pole, twenty feet or more long, the 

 mud is sounded in a regular manner in a circle of per- 



