The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. 19
variety around them. There was the honest cock-robin, the favorite game of stripling sportsmen, with its loud, querulous note ; and the
twittering blackbirds flying in sable clouds; and the golden-winged woodpecker, with his crimson crest, his broad black gorget, and splen-
did plumage ; and the cedar-bird, with its red-tipt wings and yellow-tipt tail, and its little montero cap of feathers; and the blue jay, that
noisy coxcomb, in his gay light-blue coat and white under-clothes, screaming and chattering, nodding and bobbing and bowing, and pre-
tending to be on good terms with every songster of the grove.
As Ichabod jogged slowly on his way, his eye, ever open to every
symptom of culinary abundance, ranged with delight over the treasures of jolly autumn. On all sides he beheld vast store of apples;
some hanging in oppressive opulence on the trees; some gathered into baskets and barrels for the market; others heaped up in rich piles
for the cider-press. Farther on he beheld great fields of Indian corn,
with its golden ears peeping from their leafy coverts, and holding out
the promise of cakes and hasty-pudding; and the yellow pumpkins lying beneath them, turning up their fair round bellies to the sun, and
giving ample prospects of the most luxurious of pies ; and anon he passed the fragrant buckwheat fields, breathing the odor of the bee-
hive, and as he beheld them, soft anticipations stole over his mind of dainty slapjacks, well buttered, and garnished with honey or treacle,
by the delicate little dimpled hand of Katrina Van Tassel. Thus feeding his mind with many sweet thoughts and "sugared
suppositions," he journeyed along the sides of a range of hills which
look out upon some of the goodliest scenes of the mighty Hudson.
The sun gradually wheeled his broad disk down into the west. The wide bosom of the Tappan Zee lay motionless and glossy, excepting
that here and there a gentle undulation waved and prolonged the blue
shadow of the distant mountain. A few amber clouds floated in the
sky, without a breath of air to move them. The horizon was of a fine
golden tint, changing gradually into a pure apple-green, and from
that into the deep blue of the mid-heaven. A slanting ray lingered
