WHEN Rip awoke, the sun was shining. He rose, stiffly, and reached for his gun: but it was rusted and rotten. He whistled for Wolf: but Wolf never came. And when Rip turned sorrowfully for home, he found himself stumbling through a barely recognisable landscape.
The village was changed too, and it was not just the unwonted air of bustle. Old friends had died in a war. The former schoolmaster was now a grandee in something called Congress, and the King George was now the General Washington (whoever he was). In fact, twenty years had passed, and Rip had slept through the American Revolution.*
Doubters tapped their foreheads, but old Peter Vanderdonk remembered him, and was adamant that Rip’s wild tale only confirmed local legend. That quite satisfied the rest. Rip’s grown-up daughter took him into her home; and as his wife had died of apoplexy (scolding a pedlar) Rip lived happily ever after — though he never quite understood why they renamed the ‘King George’.
The American War of Independence began in 1775 with clashes between British troops and rebels at Lexington and Concord following The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, though the first stirrings had come with the so-called The Boston Tea Party in 1773. It ended in 1783 with recognition of the sovereign United States of America, having seen bloodshed on both sides of the Atlantic.