“Lou, the valley looks exactly as I hoped it would!” Penny went on eagerly. “It has a dreamy, drowsy atmosphere, just as Irving described the Sleepy Hollow of legend!”
Louise bent to drink of the spring again. She sponged her hot face with a dampened handkerchief. Pulling off shoes and stockings, she let the cool water trickle over her bare feet.
“According to legend, the valley and its inhabitants were bewitched,” Penny rambled on. “Why, the Indians considered these hills as the abode of Spirits. Sometimes the Spirits took mischievous delight in wreaking trouble upon the villagers—”
Penny’s voice trailed off. From far down the hillside came the faint thud of hoofbeats. The girl’s attention became fixed upon a moving horseman on the road below.
“Now what?” inquired Louise impatiently. “Don’t try to tell me you’ve seen the Headless Horseman already?”
“I’ve certainly seen a horseman! My, can that fellow ride!”
Louise picked up her shoes and hobbled over the stones to the trail’s end. Through a gap in the trees she gazed down upon a winding turnpike fringed on either side with an old-fashioned rail fence. A horseman, mounted on a roan mare, rode bareback at a full run. As the girls watched in admiration, the mare took the low fence in one magnificent leap and crashed out of sight through the trees.
“You’re right, Penny,” Louise acknowledged. “What wouldn’t I give to be able to ride like that! One of the villagers, I suppose.”
The hoofbeats rapidly died away. Louise turned wearily around, intending to remount her horse. She stared in astonishment. Where the mare had grazed, there now was only trampled grass.
“Where’s my horse?” she demanded. “Where’s White Foot?”