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, be is dead and
gone these eighteen years! There was a wooden tombstone in the
churchyard 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!