d! Wilt mend it for me, father?

TELL.
Not I; a true-born archer helps himself.

[Boys retire.

HEDWIG.
The boys begin to use the bow betimes.

TELL.
'Tis early practice only makes the master.

HEDWIG.
Ah! Would to heaven they never learnt the art!

TELL.
But they shall learn it, wife, in all its points.
Whoe'er would carve an independent way
Through life must learn to ward or plant a blow.

HEDWIG.
Alas, alas! and they will never rest
Contentedly at home.

TELL.
No more can I!
I was not framed by nature for a shepherd.
Restless I must pursue a changing course;
I only feel the flush and joy of life
In starting some fresh quarry every day.

HEDWIG.
Heedless the while of all your wife's alarms
As she sits watching through long hours at home.
For my soul sinks with terror at the tales
The servants tell about your wild adventures.
Whene'er we part my trembling heart forebodes
That you will ne'er come back to me again.
I see you on the frozen mountain steeps,
Missing, perchance, your leap from cliff to cliff;
I see the chamois, with a wild rebound,
Drag you down with him o'er the precipice.
I see the avalanche close o'er your head,
The treacherous ice give way, and you sink down
Entombed alive within its hideous gulf.
Ah! in a hundred varying forms does death
Pursue the Alpine huntsman on his course.
That way of life can surely ne'er be blessed,
Where life and limb are perilled every hour.

TELL.
The man that bears a quick and steady eye,
And trusts to God and his own lusty sinews,
Passes, with scarce a scar, through every danger.
The mountain cannot awe the mountain child.

[Having finished his work, he lays aside his tools.

And now, methinks, the door will hold awhile.
The axe at home oft saves the carpenter.

HEDWIG.
Whither away!

[Takes his cap.

TELL.
To Altdorf, to your father.

HEDWIG.
You have some dangerous enterprise in view? Confess!

TELL.
Why think you so?

HEDWIG.
Some scheme's on foot,
Against the governors. There was a Diet
Held on the Rootli--that I know--and you
Are one of the confederacy I'm sure.

TELL.
I was not there. Yet will I not hold back
Whene'er my country calls me to her aid.

HEDWIG.
Wherever danger is, will you be placed.
On you, as ever, will the burden fall.

TELL.
Each man shall have the post that fits his powers.

HEDWIG.
You took--ay, 'mid the thickest of the storm--
The man of Unterwa