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winners did not know that there was a contest until they received their prize, which was a freshly fattened opossum in their mailbox. Carl wanted Mrs. Boatwright to receive one of his prizes, but it was raining much too hard and she lived too far away. Each of the boys wanted to give Miss Coalson a prize, but that was a different game altogether. The group scattered and agreed to meet again on Sunday night.
    Jay and James chose one of their neighbors, Mrs. Smith, to receive a fat opossum. The boys had fed the animals and played with them for three months, so they were almost as tame as cats. When the widow Smith opened her mailbox on Saturday morning, a fat, smelly opossum almost rolled out onto her feet. It scared her so badly that she peed all over her silly self and the old opossum waddled off into the woods. The two boys were laughing so loudly that she heard them, but they ran away before she could find them. Carl and Sam did not join that particular prize patrol because they were too busy sleeping, hypnotized by the pouring rain.
    On Sunday afternoon the rain finally stopped, but it would be days before the stream would get back to its normal size. Carl and the other boys would have a good night to play tricks. It was a couple of hours before the boys could start, so Carl went to the old barn to get things ready. He counted the jars that contained the snakes and rats, and there were many. He wished that they had more opossums, because they were a huge success. There were a variety of snakes. A couple of the black snakes were so huge that they almost filled gallon jars. There were also water snakes, and king snakes, and house pilots, and garner snakes. Oneof the jars containing garner snakes looked kind of suspicious. Sometimes those little rascals resembled copperheads, which were very poisonous. Carl was glad when Jay assured him that they really were garner snakes. Either way, each boy looked after his own jars, and those were Jay’s.
    Carl almost forgot about the rotten eggs. There were dozens of them. To make sure that they were really nasty, the boys places them next to the roof of the barn. the hot September and early October Sun, beating down on the metal roof of the barn, would assure that the eggs would be quite rancid. Carl told the other boys to wear coats with big pockets that would hold lots of eggs and snakes. He put all of the rats into one container. They were going to put them to a very good use in the girl’s toilet. Carl hoped that Mrs. Boatwright would open the door to make a Halloween inspection, because twenty or more rats would be scampering about within the small confines of the privy.
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    The Hill family went to bed early on Sunday night. Alice especially wanted to be up early on Monday morning. It would be Halloween and Mrs. Boatwright would announce the winners of the contest. Alice was a modest little girl but she was fairly confident of winning a prize for her drawing. William was sure that she would win first place.
    Not very far up the tracks, the group led by Carl was about to start making their rounds. Each boy was almost twice his normal size because of the bulky clothing that the boys were wearing. They needed plenty of pockets to carry all of the Halloween tricks that they were about to deliver.
    One of the huge black snakes was going into the school mailbox, the other one to the minister who visited the school on a regular basis. The school got one for obvious reasons. The minister got one because none of the boys liked him. He was always telling them to go to church, and he always acted like such a big sissy. Sam told the other boys that his brother told him that the minister wore women’s underwear. Carl asked Sam how it was that his brother knewso much about the minister, but Sam did not answer. Sam suspected that his brother wore women’s underwear too.
    While the boys were at school they deposited the box full of rats into the girl’s toilet. They made sure that the