'Rip van Winkle?' answered two or three. 'Oh, to be sure! There's Rip van Winkle leaning against that tree.' Rip looked where they pointed, and grew more bewildered and despairing than ever. For what he saw was himself; himself as he had been yesterday when he went up the mountain; himself in the rags that he had worn with such a light heart. 'And what is _your_ name?' asked the man in the cocked hat, watching his face. 'God knows,' cried Rip; 'I don't know who I am. I'm not myself. I'm somebody else--that's me yonder--at least I can't tell; he seems to have got into my shoes. I was myself last night, but I fell asleep on the mountain and they changed my gun, and now everything is changed and I'm changed, and I don't know what is my name or who I am.' When he had ceased, the bystanders looked at each other and tapping their foreheads, whispered something about taking away the gun so that he might not do himself a mischief. They were still talking when a pleasant-faced woman pushed through the crowd to get a peep of the stranger with the long beard. His looks frightened the child she was carrying, and it began to cry. 'Hush, Rip! hush!' she said; 'the old man won't hurt you.' As he heard her words Rip started and turned towards her eagerly. 'What is your name?' he asked. 'Judith Gardener.' 'And who was your father?' 'Ah, poor man, he was Rip van Winkle; but he went away from home more than twenty years agone. He took his dog and his gun with him, and the dog was found lying in front of the door early next morning. But as for father, whether he shot himself by accident or was carried away by the Indians, we never knew. I was only a little girl then.' 'And your mother?' 'Oh, she died only a short time since. She flew into such a passion with a pedlar who she thought had cheated her, that she broke a blood vessel.' But though Rip had inquired after his wife, all affection for her had long died away, and he did not take this news much to heart. He flung his arms round his daughter and cried. 'I am your father. Don't you know me? Young Rip van Winkle once, now old Rip van Winkle. Does _nobody_ know poor Rip van Winkle?' The crowd heard, amazed, and in silence. Then suddenly an old woman went up to him, and peered closely into his face. 'Why, 'tis Rip van Winkle, for sure!' said she. 'Welcome home, neighbour! Where have you been these twenty long years?' Rip's story was soon told, but the people who listened to it had as much difficulty in believing that you could sleep for twenty years and think it was one night, as Rip himself. 'Mad!' was the only interpretation they put upon the tale, though they did not say so openly. In the midst of the general perplexity an old man was seen coming along the road, and someone called out: 'Here is Peter Vanderdonk! Let us ask him if he ever knew of such doings?'