The narrator describes the Dutch ninepin bowlers dressed in antique clothes that Rip meets in the Kaatskills as follows: "though these folks were evidently amusing themselves, yet they maintained the gravest faces, the most mysterious silence, and were, withal, the most melancholy party of pleasure he had ever witnessed" (p. 958 [full ed.] p. 460 [shorter ed.]). What effect does the seriousness of this group have on Rip, on what happens to him, and on the rest of the story?