The hair of the affrighted pedagogue rose upon his head with terror.What was to be done?To turn and fly was now too late; and besides,what chance was there of escaping ghost or goblin,if such it was, which could ride upon the wings of the wind?Summoning up, therefore, a show of courage,he demanded in stammering accents, “Who are you?” He received no reply.He repeated his demand in a still more agitated voice.Still there was no answer.Once more he cudgelled the sides of the inflexible Gunpowder,and, shutting his eyes,broke forth with involuntary fervor into a psalm tune.Just then the shadowy object of alarm put itself in motion,and with a scramble and a bound stood at once in the middle of the road.Though the night was dark and dismal,yet the form of the unknown might now in some degree be ascertained.He appeared to be a horseman of large dimensions,and mounted on a black horse of powerful frame.He made no offer of molestation or sociability,but kept aloof on one side of the road,jogging along on the blind side of old Gunpowder,who had now got over his fright and waywardness.
Ichabod, who had no relish for this strange midnight companion,and bethought himself of the adventure of Brom Bones with the Galloping Hessian, now quickened his steed in hopes of leaving him behind. The stranger, however, quickened his horse to an equal pace. Ichabod pulled up, and fell into a walk, thinking to lag behind,--the other did the same. His heart began to sink within him; he endeavored to resume his psalm tune, but his parched tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not utter a stave. There was something in the moody and dogged silence of this pertinacious companion that was mysterious and appalling. It was soon fearfully accounted for. On mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveller in relief against the sky, gigantic in height, and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck on perceiving that he was headless!--but his horror was still more increased on observing that the head,which should have rested on his shoulders,was carried before him on the pommel of his saddle!His terror rose to desperation;he rained a shower of kicks and blows upon Gunpowder,hoping by a sudden movement to give his companion the slip;but the spectre started full jump with him. Away, then,they dashed through thick and thin;stones flying and sparks flashing at every bound.Ichabod’s flimsy garments fluttered in the air,as he stretched his long lank body away over his horse’s head,in the eagerness of his flight.
They had now reached the road which turns off to Sleepy Hollow;but Gunpowder, who seemed possessed with a demon,instead of keeping up it, made an opposite turn,and plunged headlong downhill to the left.This road leads through a sandy hollow shaded by trees for about a quarter of a mile, where it crosses the bridge famous in goblin story; and just beyond swells the green knoll on which stands the whitewashed church.
As yet the panic of the steed had given his unskilful rider an apparent advantage in the chase, but just as he had got half way through the hollow, the girths of the saddle gave way, and he felt it slipping from under him. He seized it by the pommel, and endeavored to hold it firm, but in vain; and had just time to save himself by clasping old Gunpowder round the neck, when the saddle fell to the earth, and he heard it trampled under foot by his pursuer. For a moment the terror of Hans Van Ripper’s wrath passed across his mind,--for it was his Sunday saddle; but this was no time for petty fears; the goblin was hard on his haunches; and (unskilful rider that he was!) he had much ado to maintain his seat;sometimes slipping on one side, sometimes on another,and sometimes jolted on the high ridge of his horse’s backbone,with a violence that he verily feared would cleave him asunder.
An opening in the trees now cheered him with the hopes that the church bridge was at hand. The wavering reflection of a silver star in the bosom of the brook told him that he was not mistaken. He saw the walls of the church dimly glaring under the trees beyond. He recollected the place where Brom Bones’s ghostly competitor had disappeared. “If I can but reach that bridge,” thought Ichabod, “I am safe.” Just then he heard the black steed panting and blowing close behind him; he even fancied that he felt his hot breath. Another convulsive kick in the ribs, and old Gunpowder sprang upon the bridge; he thundered over the resounding planks; he gained the opposite side; and now Ichabod cast a look behind to see if his pursuer should vanish, according to rule, in a flash of fire and brimstone. Just then he saw the goblin rising in his stirrups, and in the very act of hurling his head at him. Ichabod endeavored to dodge the horrible missile, but too late. It encountered his cranium with a tremendous crash,--he was tumbled headlong into the dust, and Gunpowder, the black steed, and the goblin rider, passed by like a whirlwind.
The next morning the old horse was found without his saddle,and with the bridle under his feet,soberly cropping the grass at his master’s gate.Ichabod did not make his appearance at breakfast;dinner-hour came, but no Ichabod.The boys assembled at the schoolhouse,and strolled idly about the banks of the brook;but no schoolmaster.Hans Van Ripper now began to feel some uneasiness about the fate of poor Ichabod, and his saddle. An inquiry was set on foot, and after diligent investigation they came upon his traces. In one part of the road leading to the church was found the saddle trampled in the dirt; the tracks of horses’ hoofs deeply dented in the road, and evidently at furious speed, were traced to the bridge, beyond which, on the bank of a broad part of the brook, where the water ran deep and black, was found the hat of the unfortunate Ichabod, and close beside it a shattered pumpkin.
The brook was searched,but the body of the schoolmaster was not to be discovered.Hans Van Ripper as executor of his estate,examined the bundle which contained all his worldly effects.They consisted of two shirts and a half;two stocks for the neck;a pair or two of worsted stockings;an old pair of corduroy small-clothes; a rusty razor;a book of psalm tunes full of dog’s-ears;and a broken pitch-pipe.As to the books and furniture of the schoolhouse,they belonged to the community,excepting Cotton Mather’s “History of Witchcraft,” a “New England Almanac,” and a book of dreams and fortune-telling;in which last was a sheet of foolscap much scribbled and blotted in several fruitless attempts to make a copy of verses in honor of the heiress of Van Tassel. These magic books and the poetic scrawl were forthwith consigned to the flames by Hans Van Ripper; who, from that time forward, determined to send his children no more to school, observing that he never knew any good come of this same reading and writing. Whatever money the schoolmaster possessed, and he had received his quarter’s pay but a day or two before, he must have had about his person at the time of his disappearance.
The mysterious event caused much speculation at the church on the following Sunday. Knots of gazers and gossips were collected in the churchyard, at the bridge, and at the spot where the hat and pumpkin had been found. The stories of Brouwer, of Bones, and a whole budget of others were called to mind; and when they had diligently considered them all, and compared them with the symptoms of the present case, they shook their heads, and came to the conclusion that Ichabod had been carried off by the Galloping Hessian. As he was a bachelor, and in nobody’s debt, nobody troubled his head any more about him; the school was removed to a different quarter of the hollow, and another pedagogue reigned in his stead.