Page:The strange story book.djvu/88

 that he was drowned in a squall off Antony's Nose. Anyway, he never came back here.'

'And van Bummel, the schoolmaster?'

'He went off to the wars too, and became a general, and is now a member of Congress.'

Rip asked no further questions: his home and his friends were gone, and he seemed to be alone in the world. At length a cry of despair broke from him.

'Does nobody know Rip van Winkle? '

'Rip van Winkle?' answered two or three. 'Oh, to be sure! There's Rip van Winkle leaning against that tree.'

Rip looked where they pointed, and grew more bewildered and despairing than ever. For what he saw was himself; himself as he had been yesterday when he went up the mountain; himself in the rags that he had worn with such a light heart.

'And what is your name? ' asked the man in the cocked hat, watching his face.

'God knows,' cried Rip; ' I don't know who I am. I'm not myself. I'm somebody else—that's me yonder—at least I can't tell; he seems to have got into my shoes. I was myself last night, but I fell asleep on the mountain and they changed my gun, and rmyt everything is changed and I'm changed, and I don't know what is my name or who I am.'

When he had ceased, the bystanders looked at each other and tapping their foreheads, whispered something about taking away the gun so that he might not do himself a mischief. They were still talking when a pleasant-faced woman pushed through the crowd to get a peep of the stranger with the long beard. His looks frightened the child she was carrying, and it began to cry. 'Hush, Rip! hush!' she said; 'the old man won't hurt you.'

As he heard her words Rip started and turned towards her eagerly.

'What is your name?' he asked.

'Judith Gardener.'

'And who was your father?'

'Ah, poor man, he was Rip van Winkle; but he went away