till after the big feast, composed chiefly of eggs, roasted, boiled and parched by the open fire on Easter day.
Sometimes, if a boy makes a bad throw Easter, then nothing but broken eggs follow in the free fight. But among the quieter boys the worst effect is acute indigestion from a mixture of over-done goose, guinea, turkey and hen eggs.
The last big Easter campaign I took part in was in Silverton, and all of us boys in the neighborhood were jealous of Joe Welch because we had a hunch that Joe had the greatest number of eggs. He was the shrewdest of us all, and what was more to the purpose, he was close-mouthed, and there was nothing in his silent laugh at the post-office corner of evenings to tip us off as to just where his eggs were hidden. He had made several big steals from other boys, and it was surmised that it was he who had acquired Warren Libby’s collection of turkey eggs.
Late one afternoon, when I had been kept in our house longer than usual by a lesson in arithmetic by my father, and just as I was starting downtown, I went to take a last
