The post-meridian sun was now a trifle aslant upon the valley below; purple shadows had begun to creep along the green slopes. How warm was the fragrance of the grapes, hanging upon a great vine that draped an oak from topmost bough to root, and which was pillaged as high as the arm of man could reach! The tall weeds were all resounding with the whir of acrobatic grasshoppers, now and then leaping amazingly high into the air. Not a note came from the birds now; not a wing was astir. All the landscape shimmered through the noontide heat. The forge, where the three judges of the election sat with the precious ballot-box, of which they were sworn not to lose sight till the polls were closed and the vote counted out, seemed a quiet and cool refuge, with its dark shadows, and its high, tent-like roof, and its ill-chinked walls, affording glimpses of the green vistas without. The little window at the rear, into which that mysterious semblance of the smith had stared, pale and reproachful, at its vigorous living self, was wide open; showing now a squirrel frisking by on the mountain slope, and now only a devious winding path amidst the greenth up the mountain-side, with the trumpet-vine a-blooming scarlet over a gray rock, and in the low branches of an elder-bush a bird on a nest. Now and then faces were thrust in at this window,—most often young and beardless, but sometimes old and grizzly,—to curiously scan the judges and the practical illustration of the theory of election by suffrage. The judges, in rickety chairs, tilted on the hind legs, demurely smoked their pipes, while the clerk sat at the pine table on which the ballot-box rested. The hearth was fireless, the hood smokeless, the anvil silent. The stir outside came cheerily in, and when the line of voters slackened, and no ballot had been deposited for some time, and the interest of the proceedings seemed indefinitely suspended, the judges looked wistfully through the open door, and were not consoled for the dullness by their preëminence and responsibility and conspicuous honors. That spirit of humor, always freakishly manifested in a crowd, was quick to seize on the situation, and occasionally remarks were made outside, pointed and personal, obviously intended to be overheard within. “Did you-uns know ez Jethro Peake war jedge o’ ’lection?” demanded one tousled-headed apparition, at the famous batten shutter, of an unseen crony without. “Never knowed he war jedge o’ nuthin’ ’ceptin’ jedge o’ whiskey,” the unseen crony replied. And with these trivial incidents were bridged the intervals when it seemed as if all the district had voted that cared to vote, and that there was naught more for the judges but to sit in stately isolation, till the loitering summer sun should dawdle down the western sky, and the hour come when it would be lawful to declare the polls closed.