Page:The strange story book.djvu/90

 but a flesh and blood man, with friends like other people. He could hardly speak for happiness, but he grasped Peter's hand tightly, and then the man with the cocked hat asked Peter if he had ever heard any strange stories of the Catskill Mountains.

'Ay, that have I, many a time,' replied Peter. 'My grandfather—he was mighty taken up with all such things—told me that the great Hendrik Hudson who first came over from Europe and gave his name to the river, held a feast up there once in every twenty years, with the crew of his ship the "Half Moon"; and my old father had actually beheld them playing at ninepins in the hollow of the mountains. And though I never saw anything myself,' finished Peter, 'I heard the sound of then: balls one summer afternoon, and anybody who did not know, would have thought it was thunder.'

After this the crowd broke up and went about its own concerns, and Rip returned with his daughter to her own house. Her husband was one of the children he had played with long ago, and he was now a thriving farmer. Rip's son, whom he had seen leaning against the tree, was supposed to be employed on the farm, but he was no more fond of attending to his own work than his father before him.

Little by little Rip slipped back into his former life, and gathered about him those of his old friends that were still left. But now, as in the days of long ago, it was the children whom he loved best, and when they grew tired of romping together, he would sit down on some green knoll while they climbed about him, and tell them the tale, of which they never grew weary, of his night on the Catskills.

None of you who read this story are old enough to remember the wonderful American actor Jefferson, who played Rip van Winkle till he grew at last to feel he was more Rip van Winkle than Jefferson. But those who did see him act it will never forget it, nor his burst of despair when he came home, to be repudiated and denied by everyone.