th a fit of the
rheumatism, I shall have a blest time with Dame Van Winkle." With some
difficulty he got down into the glen: he found the gully up which he
and his companion had ascended the preceding evening; but to his
astonishment a mountain stream was now foaming down it, leaping from
rock to rock, and filling the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however,
made shift to scramble up its sides, working his toilsome way through
thickets of birch, sassafras, and witch-hazel, and sometimes tript up
or entangled by the wild grape-vines that twisted their coils or
tendrils from tree to tree, and spread a kind of network in his path.

At length he reached to where the ravine had opened through the cliffs
to the amphitheater; but no traces of such opening remained. The rocks
presented a high impenetrable wall over which the torrent came
tumbling in a sheet of feathery foam, and fell into a broad deep
basin, black from the shadows of the surrounding forest. Here, then,
poor Rip was brought to a stand. He again called and whistled after
his dog; he was only answered by the cawing of a flock of idle crows,
sporting high in air about a dry tree that overhung a sunny precipice;
and who, secure in their elevation, seemed to look down and scoff at
the poor man's perplexities. What was to be done? the morning was
passing away, and Rip felt famished for want of his breakfast. He
grieved to give up his dog and gun; he dreaded to meet his wife; but
it would not do to starve among the mountains. He shook his head,
shouldered the rusty firelock, and, with a heart full of trouble and
anxiety, turned his steps homeward.

As he approached the village he met a number of people, but none whom
he knew, which somewhat surprized him, for he had thought himself
acquainted with every one in the country round. Their dress, too, was
of a different fashion from that to which he was accustomed. They all
stared at him with equal marks of surprize, and whenever they cast
their eyes upon him, invariably stroked 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 larg