From the inn Rip turned to the crowd that stood about it, and even here the strange alteration that pervaded everything and everybody was visible. There was none of the former air of calm and leisure characteristic of the friends who had sat with him round the tree yesterday--or was it a hundred years ago? This crowd was noisy and bustling and inclined to quarrel: full of plans and inventions to judge by the talk, and eager to discuss and find fault with the contents of a handbill, which one of their number was handing about. Rip did not understand much of what they were saying, but he caught such phrases as 'Members of Congress,' 'Bunker's Hill,' 'liberty,' and other expressions as meaningless to him as if they were uttered in a foreign tongue. * * * * * It was some time before he noticed that to the villagers on their side he himself was an object of great interest and curiosity. They pressed round him and made remarks to each other about his strange dress and the rust on his gun, while the little man with the handbills pushed his way up to him and inquired 'how he had voted?' which Rip, who had not the least idea what he meant, answered merely with a stare. Another who desired to know 'whether he was Federal or Democrat' fared no better; but a third questioner, who asked why he had come to the election with a gun on his shoulder and a mob at his heels, and if he intended to head a riot, at last gave Rip back his power of speech. 'Alas! gentlemen,' he cried; 'I am a poor, quiet man, a native of this village and a loyal subject of King George.' The tumult that broke forth at this reply nearly deafened him. 'A spy! a spy!' shouted the people, 'away with him! to the gallows with him!' and it might have gone hardly with Rip had not a man in a cocked hat interfered and called them to order. The man next demanded of Rip what he wanted and why he was there, to which Rip humbly made answer that he had come in search of some of his neighbours who had been used to meet him at the tavern. 'Well, give us their names?' said the man in the cocked hat. 'Nicholas Vedder, the innkeeper,' answered Rip. There was a moment's silence; then an old man, in a thin piping voice, spoke. 'Nicholas Vedder? Why, he's dead and gone these eighteen years; and even his wooden tombstone in the churchyard has got rotten.' 'And Brom Dutcher?' 'Oh, he enlisted as a soldier in the beginning of the war. Some say he was killed at the storming of Stony Point; others, 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?'