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The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
almost every thing but his viciousness. He was gaunt and shagged, with a ewe neck and a head like a hammer ; his rusty mane and tail
were tangled and knotted with burrs ; one eye had lost its pupil, and was glaring and spectral; but the other had the gleam of a genuine
devil in it. Still he must have had fire and mettle in his day, if we may judge from the name he bore of Gunpowder. He had, in fact,
been a favorite steed of his master's, the choleric Van Ripper, who was a furious rider, and had infused, very probably, some of his own spirit into the animal; for, old and broken-down as he looked, there was more of the lurking devil in him than in any young filly in the country. Ichabod was a suitable figure for such a steed. He rode with short stirrups, which brought his knees nearly up to the pommel of his sad-
dle ; his sharp elbows stuck out like grasshoppers'; he carried his whip perpendicularly in his hand, like a sceptre, and, as his horse jogged on, the motion of his arms was not unlike the flapping of a pair of
wings. A small wool hat rested on the top of his nose, for so his scanty strip of forehead might be called ; and the skirts of his black coat
fluttered out almost to the horse's tail. Such was the appearance of Ichabod and his steed, as they shambled out of the gate of Hans Van
Ripper, and it was altogether such an apparition as is seldom to be met with in broad daylight.
It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day, the sky was clear and serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always
associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had
been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet. Streaming files of wild ducks began to make their appear-
ance high in the air ; the bark of the squirrel might be heard from the groves of beech and hickory nuts, and the pensive whistle of the
quail at intervals from the neighboring stubble-field. The small birds were taking their farewell banquets. In the fulness of their revelry, they fluttered, chirping and frolicking, from bush
to bush, and tree to tree, capricious from the very profusion and
