All was now bustle and hubbub in the late quiet schoolroom. The scholars were hurried through their lessons. Those who were nimble skipped over half without being noticed; and those who were slow were hurried along by a smart application of the rod. Then books were flung aside without being put away on the shelves; inkstands were overturned, benches thrown down, and the whole school was turned loose an hour before the usual time, the children yelping and racketing about the green, in joy at their early freedom. The gallant Ichabod now spent at least an extra half hour at his toilet, brushing and furbishing his best and only suit of rusty black, and arranging his looks by a bit of broken looking-glass that hung up in the schoolhouse. That he might make his appearance at the party in the true style of a cavalier, he borrowed a horse from the farmer with whom he was boarding, and, thus gallantly mounted, rode forth, like a knight-errant in quest of adventures. The animal he bestrode was a broken-down plow horse. He was gaunt and shagged, with a slender neck, and a head like a hammer. His mane and tail were tangled and knotted with burs. One eye had lost its pupil, and was glaring and spectral, but the other still gleamed with genuine wickedness. He must have had plenty of fire and mettle in his day, if we may judge from his name, which was Gunpowder. Ichabod was a rider suited for such a steed. He rode with short stirrups, which brought his knees nearly up to the pommel of the saddle; his elbows stuck out like a grasshopper’s; and as the horse jogged on, the motion of his arms was not unlike the flapping of a pair of wings. A small wool hat rested on the top of his nose, for so his scanty strip of forehead might be called; and the skirts of his black coat fluttered out almost to the horse’s tail. Such was the appearance of Ichabod and his steed as they shambled along the highway; and it was altogether such an apparition as is seldom to be met with in broad daylight. It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day. The sky was clear and serene. The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been nipped by the frost into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet. Streaming files of wild ducks began to make their appearance high in the air. The bark of the squirrel might be heard from the groves of beech and hickory, and the pensive whistle of the quail at intervals from the neighboring stubble fields.