hat afternoon, and instructions
upon the proper way of opening a meeting had been profuse. Silvey grew
palpably nervous.

"This here meeting," he blurted at last.

"That isn't the way I told you." John shook the revolver in disapproval.
"Meeting will now come to order."

"Meeting will now come to order," Silvey repeated mechanically.
"Secretary call the roll."

John snapped his fingers in disgust. He had been so busy looking after
Silvey's duties that he'd forgotten his own. There was an interchange of
glances between the two before the president spoke up scornfully,

"We'll have to let that go. Who'll be in the gang this year?"

Each member present raised a hand. The two leaders in the affair beamed.
Everything augured for a successful night of sport.

"What'll we do?"

"Let's go outside where there's room," Sid suggested. "My leg's gone to
sleep."

"Now," said John a few minutes later, as the five boys stretched
themselves out on the soft grass beside the shack, "there's the garbage
cans on the flats' back porches. They're never, taken in on Halloween."

Silvey nodded. "'Member the chase the janitor gave us last year before
we had half of 'em spilled?"

"That was because we started at the bottom and worked up," explained the
master strategist. "This time we'll begin at the top and spill 'em out
as we go down. We'll be off before the janitor learns about it."

Red chewed on a blade of grass thoughtfully. "Leave milk bottles alone
this time. 'Specially old lady Boyer's."

The members nodded approval. On the Halloween preceding, Sid had
discovered a solitary container on a window near the flat entrance and
dashed it to the cement walk amid exultant yells. Hardly had the noise
subsided when a wrinkled, gray-haired head made a distracted appearance
at the opening, with a cry of, "I want my milk! I want my milk!"
Returning a moment later from panic-stricken flight, the full meaning of
the act dawned upon the boys and remorse overcame them. A hasty search
for coin of the realm, a moment of consultation, and Silvey, boosted
high on his comrades' shoulders, had rapped on the window ledge. "It
ain't much, ma'am, but it's all we got, and we didn't know the bottle
was yours," he had murmured; and, all unwitting of the sardonic humor of
the act, had passed in a check good for a drink at a near-by saloon.

There were moments of reflective silence. "Isn't there something new we
can do this year?" Silvey appealed to