He affirmed that on returning one night from
the neighboring village of Sing-Sing he had been over taken by
this midnight trooper; that he had offered to race with him for a
bowl of punch, and should have won it too, for Daredevil beat the
goblin horse all hollow, but just as they came to the church
bridge the Hessian bolted and vanished in a flash of fire.
All these tales, told in that drowsy undertone with which men
talk in the dark, the countenances of the listeners only now and
then receiving a casual gleam from the glare of a pipe, sank deep
in the mind of Ichabod. He repaid them in kind with large
extracts from his invaluable author, Cotton Mather, and added
many marvellous events that had taken place in his native state
of Connecticut and fearful sights which he had seen in his
nightly walks about Sleepy Hollow.
The revel now gradually broke up. The old farmers gathered
together their families in their wagons, and were heard for some
time rattling along the hollow roads and over the distant hills.
Some of the damsels mounted on pillions behind their favorite
swains, and their light-hearted laughter, mingling with the
clatter of hoofs, echoed along the silent woodlands, sounding
fainter and fainter until they gradually died away, and the late
scene of noise and frolic was all silent and deserted.
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