School was recently over for the summer, and the feeling of liberty sat uneasily on most of them they tended to gather together quietly for a while before they broke into boisterous play, and their talk was still of the classroom and the teacher, of books and reprimands. The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o’clock in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on June 26th, but in this village, where there were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took only about two hours, so it could begin at ten o’clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner. The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green.
