Part 2 Summary

By the time the next morning arrives, everyone knows about the famous sack in Hadleyburg. The town's principal citizens - a group of nineteen men - spend the better part of the day congratulating each other and basking in the town's new-found fame. Even the town's "minor" citizens sense the buzz, and by day's end, virtually everyone from the town as well as the surrounding municipalities has made the pilgrimage to the bank to see the sack of coins. Reporters from all over the region come to town as well so that they could tell the story of the mysterious stranger and the sack of gold.

By the end of the week, the town returns to a state of relative calm. One of the town's citizens, a man named Jack Halliday, begins to notice that a sense of sadness seems to have permeated...