There was a silence for a little while, when an old man replied, in a
thin, piping voice, "Nicholas Vedder! why, he is dead and gone these
eighteen years! There was a wooden tombstone in the churchyard that used
to tell all about him, but that's rotten and gone, too."
"Where's Brom Dutcher?"
"Oh, he went off to the army in the beginning of the war; some say he
was killed at the storming of Stony Point; others say he was drowned in
a squall at the foot of Anthony's Nose. I don't know; he never came back
again."
"Where's Van Brummel, the schoolmaster?"
"He went off to the wars, too, was a great militia general, and is now
in congress."
Rip's heart died away at hearing of these sad changes in his home and
friends and finding himself thus alone in the world. Every answer
puzzled him, too, by treating of such enormous lapses of time, and of
matters which he could not understand: war--congress--Stony Point. He
had no courage to ask after any more friends, but cried out in despair,
"Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle?"
"Oh, Rip Van Winkle!" exclaimed two or three, "oh, to be sure! that's
Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning against the tree."
Rip looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of himself, as he went up
the mountain--apparently as lazy and certainly as ragged. The poor
fellow was now completely confounded. He doubted his own identity, and
whether he was himself or another man. In the midst of his bewilderment,
the man in the cocked hat demanded who he was, and what was his name.
"God knows," exclaimed he, at his wits' end; "I'm not myself--I'm
somebody else--that's me yonder--no--that's somebody else got into my
shoes--I was myself last night, but I fell asleep on the mountain, and
they've changed my gun, and everything's changed, and I'm changed, and I
can't tell what's my name, or who I am!"
The bystanders began now to look at each other, nod, wink significantly,
and tap their fingers against their foreheads. There was a whisper,
also, about securing the gun, and keeping the old fellow from doing
mischief, at the very suggestion of which the self-important man in the
cocked hat retired with some precipitation. At this critical moment a
fresh, comely woman pressed through the throng to get a peep at the
gray-bearded man. She had a chubby child in her arms, which, frightened
at his looks, began to cry. "Hush, Rip," cried she, "hush, you little
fool; the old man won't hurt you." The name of the child, the air of the
mother, the tone of her voice, all awakened a train of recollections in
his mind. "What is your name, my good woman?" asked he.
"Judith Gardenier."
"And your father's name?"
"Ah, poor man, Rip Van Winkle was his name, but it's twenty years since
he went away from home with his gun, and never has been heard of
since--his dog came home without him; but whether he shot himself, or
was carried away by the Indians, nobody can tell. I was then but a
little girl."
Rip had but one question more to ask; but he put it with a faltering
voice:
"Where's your mother?"
"Oh, she, too, had died but a short time since; she broke a blood-vessel
in a fit of passion at a New England peddler."
There was a drop of comfort, at least, in this intelligence. The honest
man could contain himself no longer. He caught his daughter and her
child in his arms. "I am your father!" cried he--"Young Rip Van Winkle
once--Old Rip Van Winkle now! Does nobody know poor Rip Van Winkle?"
All stood amazed until an old woman, tottering out from among the crowd,
put her hand to her brow, and peering under it in his face for a moment,
exclaimed, "Sure enough! it is Rip Van Winkle--it is himself! Welcome
home again, old neighbor. Why, where have you been these twenty long
years?"
Rip's story was soon told, for the whole twenty years had been to him
but as one night. The neighbors stared when they heard it; some were
seen to wink at each other, and put their tongues in their cheeks: and
the self-important man in the cocked hat, who when the alarm was over
had returned to the field, screwed down the corners of his mouth, and
shook his head--upon which there was a general shaking of the head
throughout the assemblage.
It was determined, however, to take the opinion of old Peter Vanderdonk,
who was seen slowly advancing up the road. He was a descendant of the
historian of that name, who wrote one of the earliest accounts of the
province. Peter was the most ancient inhabitant of the village, and well
versed in all the wonderful events and traditions of the neighborhood.
He recollected Rip at once, and corroborated his story in the most
satisfactory manner. He assured the company that it was a fact, handed
down from his ancestor the historian, that the Catskill Mountains had
always been haunted by strange beings. It was affirmed that the great
Hendrick Hudson, the first discoverer of the river and country, kept a
kind of vigil there every twenty years, with his crew of the
_Half-moon_; being permitted in this way to revisit the scenes of his
enterprise, and keep a guardian eye upon the river and the great city
called by his name. His father had once seen them in their old Dutch
dresses playing at ninepins in a hollow of the mountain; and he himself
had heard, one summer afternoon, the sound of their balls, like distant
peals of thunder.
To make a long story short, the company broke up and returned to the
more important concerns of the election. Rip's daughter took him home to
live with her; she had a snug, well-furnished house, and a stout, cheery
farmer for a husband, whom Rip recollected for one of the urchins that
used to climb upon his back. As to Rip's son and heir, who was the ditto
of himself, seen leaning against the tree, he was employed to work on
the farm; but showed an hereditary disposition to attend to anything
else but his business.