When the dance was at an end, Ichabod was attracted to a knot of the sager folks, who, with old Van Tassel, sat smoking at one end of the piazza, gossioing over former times, and drawing out long stories about the war.   This neighborhood, at the time of which I am speaking, was one of those highly favored places which abound with chronicle and great men. The british and American line had run near it during the war; it had, therefore,been the scene of maurading, and infested with refugees, cowboys, and all kinds of border chivalry. Just sufficient time had elapsed to enable each storyteller to dress up his tale with a little becoming fiction, and, in the indistinctness of his recollection, to make himself the hero of every exploit.