Part 1

An omniscient narrator opens the story with a description of Hadleyburg, U.S.A., as "honest," "upright," and very proud of its "unsmirched" reputation. The town enjoys national renown for protecting every citizen against all temptation from infancy through death. Appropriately, the town motto reads "Lead us not into temptation." The tale then segues to the bitter thoughts of an "offended stranger," who has nursed a grudge against the town during the past year for an unnamed, unrequited offense. Rather than murder the one or two individuals responsible, the stranger plots vengeance to "comprehend the entire town, and not let so much as one person escape unhurt."

The "mysterious, big" stranger puts his scheme into action when he delivers a sack of gold coins, supposedly worth $40,000, to the home of Mary and Edward Richards, who is a cashier at the Hadleyburg bank. Alone when the sack arrives...