stool, patting the children, and taking a purring grimalkin on his lap,
while he conciliated the good-will of the old Dutch housewife, and drew
from her long ghost stories, spun out to the humming accompaniment of
her wheel.

His greatest treasure of historic lore, however, was discovered in an
old goblin-looking mill, situated among rocks and waterfalls, with
clanking wheels, and rushing streams, and all kinds of uncouth noises.
A horse-shoe, nailed to the door to keep off witches and evil spirits,
showed that this mill was subject to awful visitations. As we approached
it, an old negro thrust his head, all dabbled with flour, out of a hole
above the water-wheel, and grinned, and rolled his eyes, and looked like
the very hobgoblin of the place. The illustrious Diedrich fixed upon
him, at once, as the very one to give him that invaluable kind of
information never to be acquired from books. He beckoned him from his
nest, sat with him by the hour on a broken mill-stone, by the side of
the waterfall, heedless of the noise of the water, and the clatter
of the mill; and I verily believe it was to his conference with this
African sage, and the precious revelations of the good dame of the
spinning-wheel, that we are indebted for the surprising though true
history of Ichabod Crane and the headless horseman, which has since
astounded and edified the world.

But I have said enough of the good old times of my youthful days; let me
speak of the Hollow as I found it, after an absence of many years,
when it was kindly given me once more to revisit the haunts of my
boyhood. It was a genial day, as I approached that fated region. The
warm sunshine was tempered by a slight haze, so as to give a dreamy
effect to the landscape. Not a breath of air shook the foliage. The
broad Tappan Sea was without a ripple, and the sloops, with drooping