like a blessing. There was not a chair there that I would
have exchanged for any other chair--not a tree that I would have parted
with--not a custom of that simple, busy place that I would have changed.
I knew now all my stupidity--and my good fortune.

III. FRIENDSHIP

WHEN I look back upon the village where I lived as a child, I cannot
remember that there were any divisions in our society. This group went
to the Congregational church, and that to the Presbyterian, but each
family felt itself to be as good as any other, and even if, ordinarily,
some of them withdrew themselves in mild exclusiveness, on all occasions
of public celebration, or when in trouble, we stood together in the
pleasantest and most unaffected democracy.

There were only the "Bad Madigans" outside the pale.

The facts about the Bad Madigans were, no doubt, serious enough, but
the fiction was even more appalling. As to facts, the father drank,
the mother followed suit, the appearance of the house--a ramshackle old
place beyond the fair-grounds--was a scandal; the children could not be
got to go to school for any length of time, and, when they were there,
each class in which they were put felt itself to be in disgrace, and the
dislike focused upon the intruders, sent them, sullen and hateful, back
to their lair. And, indeed, the Madigan house seemed little more than a
lair. It had been rather a fine house once, and had been built for the
occupancy of the man who owned the fairgrounds; but he choosing finally
to live in the village, had permitted the house to fall into decay,
until only a family with no sense of order or self-respect would think
of occupying it.

When there occurred one of the rare burglaries in the village, when
anything was missing from a clothes-line, or a calf or pig disappeared,
it was generally laid to the Madigans. Unaccounted-for fires were
supposed to be their doing; they were accorded responsibility for
vicious practical jokes; and it was generally felt that before we were
through with them they would commit some blood-curdling crime.

When, as sometimes happened, I had met one of the Bad Madigans on the
road, or down on the village street, my heart had beaten as if I was
face to face with a company of banditti; but I cannot say that this
excitement was caused by aversion alone. The truth was, the Bad
Madigans fascinated me. They stood out from all the others, proudly and
disdainfully like Robin Hood and his ban