CHAPTER VII


Having set up the pole and cap in the meadow, Gessler sent two of his
bodyguard, Friesshardt (I should think you would be safe in pronouncing
this Freeze-hard, but you had better ask somebody who knows) and
Leuthold, to keep watch there all day, and see that nobody passed by
without kneeling down before the pole and taking off his hat to it.

But the people, who prided themselves on being what they called
_uppen zie schnuffen_, or, as we should say, "up to snuff," and
equal to every occasion, had already seen a way out of the difficulty.
They knew that if they crossed the meadow they must bow down before the
pole, which they did not want to do, so it occurred to them that an
ingenious way of preventing this would be not to cross the meadow. So
they went the long way round, and the two soldiers spent a lonely day.

"What I sez," said Friesshardt, "is, wot's the use of us wasting our
time here?" (Friesshardt was not a very well-educated man, and he did
not speak good grammar.) "None of these here people ain't a-going to
bow down to that there hat. Of course they ain't. Why, I can remember
the time when this meadow was like a fair--everybody a-shoving and
a-jostling one another for elbow-room; and look at it now! It's a desert.
That's what it is, a desert. What's the good of us wasting of our time
here, I sez. That's what I sez.