A Dutch colonist of New York who, driven from home by a termagant wife strolls into a ravine of the Katskill Mountains, falls in with a strange man whom he assists in carrying a keg, and comes upon a company of odd-looking creatures playing at ninepins, but never uttering a word, when, seizing an opportunity that offered, he took up one of the kegs he had carried, fell into a stupor, and slept 20 years, to find his beard and all the world about him quite changed.