It was the very witching time of night that Ichabod, heavy -hearted and crestfallen, pursued his travel homeward, along the sides of the lofty hills which rise above tarry town , and which he had traversed so cheerily in the afternoon. The hour was as dismal as himself. Far below him, the tappan zee spread its dusky and indistinct waste of waters, with here and there the tall mast of a sloop, riding quietly at anchor under the land. In the dead hush of midnight he could even hear the barking of the watchdog from the opposite shore of the Hudson, but it was so vague and faint as only to give an idea of his distance from this faithful companion of Man. Now and then,too, the long-drawn crowing of a cock, accidentally awakened, would sound far , far off, from some farmhouse away among the hills-but it was like a dreaming sound in his ear. No signs of life occurred near him, but occasionally the melancholy chirp of a cricket, or perhaps the gutteral twang of a bullfrog, from a neighboring marsh, as if sleeping uncomfortably and turning suddenly in his bed.