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48
WILLIAM TELL
A crowd was beginning to collect on the edge of the meadow. Its numbers swelled every minute, until quite a hundred of the commoner sort must have been gathered together. They stood pointing at the pole and talking among themselves, but nobody made any movement to cross the meadow.
At last somebody shouted “Yah!”
The soldiers took no notice.
Somebody else cried “Booh!”
“Pass along there, pass along!” said the soldiers.
Cries of “Where did you get that hat?” began to come from the body of the crowd. When the Swiss invented a catch-phrase they did not drop it in a hurry.
“Where—did—you—get—that—HAT?” they shouted.
Friesshardt and Leuthold stood like two statues in armour, paying no attention to the
