Rip's story was soon told, but the people who listened to it had as much difficulty in believing that you could sleep for twenty years and think it was one night, as Rip himself. 'Mad!' was the only interpretation they put upon the tale, though they did not say so openly.
In the midst of the general perplexity an old man was seen coming along the road, and someone called out:
'Here is Peter Vanderdonk! Let us ask him if he ever knew of such doings?'
'Ay, let us! He is the oldest dweller in the village, and we will abide by his words,' the rest answered in chorus, and they watched intently till Peter came up.
'Why! 'tis Rip van Winkle back again!' he exclaimed, just as the old woman had done. 'Right glad I am to see him, too.'
Who can tell the joy of poor Rip at this hearty greeting? So he was no ghost after all, as he had almost begun to think, but a flesh and blood man, with friends like other people. He could hardly speak for happiness, but he grasped Peter's hand tightly, and then the man with the cocked hat asked Peter if he had ever heard any strange stories of the Catskill Mountains.
'Ay, that have I, many a time,' replied Peter. 'My grandfather—he was mighty taken up with all such things—told me that the great Hendrik Hudson who first came over from Europe and gave his name to the river, held a feast up there once in every twenty years, with the crew of his ship the "Half Moon"; and my old father had actually beheld them playing at ninepins in the hollow of the mountains. And though I never saw anything myself,' finished Peter, 'I heard the sound of their balls one summer afternoon, and anybody who did not know, would have thought it was thunder.'
After this the crowd broke up and went about its own concerns, and Rip returned with his daughter to her own house. Her husband was one of the children he had played with long ago, and he was now a thriving farmer. Rip's son, whom he had seen leaning against the tree, was supposed to be employed on the farm, but he was no more fond of attending to his own work than his father before him.
Little by little Rip slipped back into his former life, and gathered about him those of his old friends that were still left. But now, as in the days of long ago, it was the children whom he loved best, and when they grew tired of romping together, he would sit down on some green knoll while they climbed about him, and tell them the tale, of which they never grew weary, of his night on the Catskills.