“Oh, he went off to the army in the beginning of the war; some say he was killed at the storming of Stony Point—­others say he was drowned in a squall at the foot of Antony’s Nose.  I don’t know—­he never came back again.”

“Where’s Van Bummel, the schoolmaster?”

“He went off to the wars too, was a great militia general, and is now in Congress.”

Rip’s heart died away at hearing of these sad changes in his home and friends, and finding himself thus alone in the world.  Every answer puzzled him too, by treating of such enormous lapses of time, and of matters which he could not understand:  war—­Congress—­Stony Point; he had no courage to ask after any more friends, but cried out in despair, “Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle?”

“Oh, Rip Van Winkle!” exclaimed two or three.

“Oh, to be sure! that’s Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning against the tree.”

Rip looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of himself, as he went up the mountain:  apparently as lazy, and certainly as ragged.  The poor fellow was now completely confounded.  He doubted his own identity, and whether he was himself or another man.  In the midst of his bewilderment, the man in the cocked hat demanded who he was, and what was his name?

“God knows,” exclaimed he, at his wit’s end; “I’m not myself—­I’m somebody else—­that’s me yonder—­no—­that’s somebody else got into my shoes—­I was myself last night, but I fell asleep on the mountain, and they’ve changed my gun, and everything’s changed, and I’m changed, and I can’t tell what’s my name, or who I am!”

The bystanders began now to look at each other, nod, wink significantly, and tap their fingers against their foreheads.  There was a whisper, also, about securing the gun, and keeping the old fellow from doing mischief, at the very suggestion of which the self-important man in the cocked hat retired with some precipitation.  At this critical moment a fresh, comely woman pressed through the throng to get a peep at the gray-bearded man.  She had a chubby child in her arms, which, frightened at his looks, began to cry.  “Hush, Rip,” cried she, “hush, you little fool; the old man won’t hurt you.”  The name of the child, the air of the mother, the tone of her voice, all awakened a train of recollections in his mind.  “What is your name, my good woman?” asked he.

“Judith Gardenier.”

“And your father’s name?”

“Ah, poor man, Rip Van Winkle was his name, but it’s twenty years since he went away from home with his gun, and never has been heard of since,—­his dog came home without him; but whether he shot himself or was carried away by the Indians, nobody can tell.  I was then but a little girl.”

Rip had but one question more to ask; and he put it with a faltering voice:—­“Where’s your mother?”

“Oh, she too had died but a short time since; she broke a blood-vessel in a fit of passion at a New England peddler.”