The Casting Vote by Mary Noailles Murfree — Read

It was a hot day in the little valley town, the first Thursday in August, the climax of a drought, with the sun blazing down from dawn to dusk, and not a cloud, not a vagrant mist, not even the stir of the impalpable ether, to interpose. The mountains that rimmed the horizon all around Colbury shimmered azure, through the heated air. No wind came down those darker indentations that marked ravines. A dazzling, stifling stillness reigned; yet now and again an eddying cloud of dust would spring up along the streets, and go whirling up-hill and down, pausing suddenly, and settling upon the overgrown shrubbery in the pretty village yards, or on white curtains hanging motionless at the windows of large, old-fashioned frame houses. Even the shade was hot with a sort of closeness unknown in the open air, yet as it dwindled to noontide proportions some alleviation seemed withdrawn; and though the mercury marked no change, all the senses welcomed the post-meridian lengthening of the images of bough and bole beneath the trees, and the fantastic architecture of the shadows of chimney and gable and dormer-window, elongated out of drawing, stretching across the grassy streets and ample gardens. There among the grape trellises, and raspberry bushes, and peach and cherry trees, the locusts chirred and chirred a tireless, vibrating panegyric on hot weather. The birds were hushed; sometimes under a clump of matted leaves one of the feathered gentry might be seen with wings well held out from his panting sides. The beautiful green beetle, here called the "June-bug," hovered about the beds of thyme, its jeweled, enameled green body and its silver gauze wings flashing in the sun, although June was far down the revolving year.

Blue and lilac lizards basked in the garden walks, which were cracked by the heat. Little stir was in the streets; the languid business of a small town was transacted if absolute need required, and postponed if a morrow would admit of contemplation. The voters slowly repaired to the polls with a sense of martyrdom in the cause of party, and the election was passing off in a most orderly fashion, there being no residuum of energy in the baking town to render it disorderly or unseemly. Often not a human being was to be seen, coming or going.