m his bed, with compunctions in his bones,
he reached for his gun. The already venerable implement was so far gone
with rot and rust that it fell to pieces in his hand, and looking down at
the fragments of it, he saw that his clothes were dropping from his body
in rags and mould, while a white beard flowed over his breast. Puzzled
and alarmed, shaking his head ruefully as he recalled the carouse of the
silent, he hobbled down the mountain as fast as he might for the grip of
the rheumatism on his knees and elbows, and entered his native village.
What! Was this Catskill? Was this the place that he left yesterday? Had
all these houses sprung up overnight, and these streets been pushed
across the meadows in a day? The people, too: where were his friends? The
children who had romped with him, the rotund topers whom he had left
cooling their hot noses in pewter pots at the tavern door, the dogs that
used to bark a welcome, recognizing in him a kindred spirit of vagrancy:
where were they?

And his wife, whose athletic arm and agile tongue had half disposed him
to linger in the mountains how happened it that she was not awaiting him
at the gate? But gate there was none in the familiar place: an unfenced
yard of weeds and ruined foundation wall were there. Rip's home was gone.
The idlers jeered at his bent, lean form, his snarl of beard and hair,
his disreputable dress, his look of grieved astonishment. He stopped,
instinctively, at the tavern, for he knew that place in spite of its new
sign: an officer in blue regimentals and a cocked hat replacing the
crimson George III. of his recollection, and labelled "General
Washington." There was a quick gathering of ne'er-do-weels, of
tavern-haunters and gaping 'prentices, about him, and though their faces
were strange and their manners rude, he made bold to ask if they knew
such and such of his friends.

"Nick Vedder? He's dead and gone these eighteen years." "Brom Dutcher? He
joined the army and was killed at Stony Point." "Van Brummel? He, too,
went to the war, and is in Congress now."

"And Rip Van Winkle?"

"Yes, he's here. That's him yonder."

And to Rip's utter confusion he saw before him a counterpart of himself,
as young, lazy, ragged, and easy-natured as he remembered himself to be,
yesterday--or, was it yesterday?

"That's young Rip," continued his informer. "His father was Rip Van
Winkle, too, but he went to the mountains twenty years ago and never came
back. He proba