endship; neither should the property or the rights of
the Count of Hapsburg be molested, nor the Bailiffs or their servants
lose one drop of blood; but the freedom which their fathers gave them
they would bequeath to their children": and then, when remembering that
upon what they did now the fate of their posterity depended, each looked
upon his friend, consoled. And Walther Fuerst, Werner Stauffacher, and
Arnold an der Halden of Melchthal lifted their hands to heaven, and, in
the name of God, who created emperor and peasant with the inalienable
rights of man, swore to maintain their freedom; and when the thirty
heard this, each one raised his hand and swore the same by God and the
Saints;--and then each went his way to his hut, and was silent, and
wintered his cattle.

In the mean while it happened that the Bailiff Hermann Gessler was
shot dead by Wilhelm Tell, who was of Buerglen, at the entrance of the
Schaechenthal, a half-hour from Altorf, in Uri,--son-in-law of Walther
Fuerst, and a man of some substance, for he had the steward-ship in
fee in Buerglen of the Frauenmuester Abbey in Zuerich,--one of the
conspirators. Out of wanton tyranny, or suspicious of the breaking out
of disturbances, Gessler determined to discover who bore the joke most
impatiently; and, after the symbolical way of the times and the people,
set up a hat, (it was on the 18th of November,) to represent the dignity
of the Duke Albrecht of Austria, and commanded all to do it homage. The
story of Tell's refusal, and of the apple placed on the head of his son
to be shot at, the world knows far and wide. Convinced by his success
that God was with him, Tell confessed, that, if the matter had gone
wrong, he would have had his revenge upon the Bailiff. Gessler did
not dare to detain him in Uri, on account of Tell's many friends and
relations, but took him up the lake, contrary to the traditions of the
people, which forbade foreign imprisonment. They had not got far beyond
the Ruetli, when the foehn-wind, breaking loose from the gulfs of the
Gothard, threw the waves into a rage, and the rocks echoed with its
angry cries. In this moment of deadly danger, Gessler commanded them to
unbind Tell, who, he knew, was an excellent boatman; and as they passed
by the foot of the Axen Mountain, to the right as you come out of the
Bay of Uri, Tell grasped his bow and leaped upon a flat rock there,
climbed up the mountain while the boat tossed to and fro against the
r