roked their chins. The constant recurrence
of this gesture induced Rip, involuntarily, to do the same, when, to his
astonishment, he found his beard had grown a foot long!

He had now entered the skirts of the village. A troop of strange
children ran at his heels, hooting after him, and pointing at his gray
beard. The dogs, too, not one of which he recognized for an old
acquaintance, barked at him as he passed. The very village was altered;
it was larger and more populous. There were rows of houses which he had
never seen before, and those which had been his familiar haunts had
disappeared. Strange names were over the doors--strange faces at the
windows--everything was strange. His mind now misgave him; he began to
doubt whether both he and the world around him were not bewitched.
Surely this was his native village, which he had left but the day
before. There stood the Catskill Mountains--there ran the silver Hudson
at a distance--there was every hill and dale precisely as it had always
been. Rip was sorely perplexed. "That flagon last night," thought he,
"has addled my poor head sadly!"

It was with some difficulty that he found the way to his own house,
which he approached with silent awe, expecting every moment to hear the
shrill voice of Dame Van Winkle. He found the house gone to decay--the
roof fallen in, the windows shattered, and the doors off the hinges. A
half-starved dog that looked like Wolf was skulking about it. Rip called
him by name, but the cur snarled, showed his teeth, and passed on. This
was an unkind cut indeed. "My very dog," sighed Rip, "has forgotten me!"

He entered the house, which, to tell the truth, Dame Van Winkle had
always kept in neat order. It was empty, forlorn, and apparently
abandoned. He called loudly for his wife and children--the lonely
chambers rang for a moment with his voice, and then all again was
silence.

III

He now hurried forth, and hastened to his old resort, the village
inn--but it, too, was gone. A large, rickety wooden building stood in
its place, with great gaping windows, some of them broken and mended
with old hats and petticoats, and over the door was painted, "The Union
Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle." Instead of the great tree that used to
shelter the quiet little Dutch inn of yore, there now was reared a
tall, naked pole, with something on the top that looked like a red
nightcap, and from it was fluttering a flag, on which was a singular
assemblage of star