"Well- who are they?- name them."
Rip bethought himself a moment, and inquired, "Where's Nicholas
Vedder?"
There was a silence for a little while, when an old man replied,
in a thin piping voice, "Nicholas Vedder! why, he is dead and gone
these eighteen years! There was a wooden tombstone in the
church-yard that used to tell all about him, but that's rotten and
gone too."
"Where's Brom Dutcher?"
"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.
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