; how they galloped over bush and brake, over hill
and swamp, until they reached the bridge; when the horseman suddenly
turned into a skeleton, threw old Brouwer into the brook, and sprang
away over the treetops with a clap of thunder.

This story was immediately matched by a thrice marvelous adventure of
Brom Bones, who made light of the galloping Hessian as an arrant
jockey. He affirmed that, on returning one night from the neighboring
village of Sing Sing, he had been overtaken by this midnight trooper;
that he had offered to race with him for a bowl of punch, and should
have won it too, for Daredevil beat the goblin horse all hollow, but
just as they came to the church bridge the Hessian bolted, and vanished
in a flash of fire.

All these tales, told in that drowsy undertone with which men talk in
the dark, the countenances of the listeners only now and then receiving
a casual gleam from the glare of a pipe, sunk deep in the mind of
Ichabod. He repaid them in kind with large extracts from his
invaluable author, Cotton Mather, and added many marvelous events that
had taken place in his native State of Connecticut, and fearful sights
which he had seen in his nightly walks about Sleepy Hollow.

The revel now gradually broke up. The old farmers gathered together
their families in their wagons, and were heard for some time rattling
along the hollow roads, and over the distant hills. Some of the
damsels mounted on pillions behind their favorite swains, and their
light-hearted laughter, mingling with the clatter of hoofs, echoed
along the silent woodlands, sounding fainter and fainter, until they
gradually died away--and the late scene of noise and frolic was all
silent and deserted. Ichabod only lingered behind, according to the
custom of country lovers, to have a tete-a-tete with the heiress, fully
convinced that he was now on the high road to success. What passed at
this interview I will not pretend to say, for in fact I do not know.
Something, however, I fear me, must have gone wrong, for he certainly
sallied forth, after no very great interval, with an air quite desolate
and chapfallen.--Oh, these women! these women! Could that girl have
been playing off any of her coquettish tricks?--Was her encouragement
of the poor pedagogue all a mere sham to secure her conquest of his
rival?--Heaven only knows, not I!--Let it suffice to say, Ichabod stole
forth with the air of one who had been sacking a hen-roost, rather