Without a word, leading his little son by the hand, Tell strode past the cap without bowing his head—and was at once stopped by the soldiers who told him he was under arrest for defying the Governor's order and made ready to take him before Gessler for trial. But Gessler himself had seen all this and was so eager to punish Tell that he did not wait for the soldiers to come to him, but with his servants and retainers hastened out into the square.
Gessler knew Tell by sight and spoke to him by name.
"What does this mean, Tell?" he demanded. "Have you not heard that this cap represents the Emperor and is to be saluted by all that pass it?"
"Aye, your Lordship," answered Tell.
"And so you propose to add defiance of my person to your other crime?" said the Governor. "I have you in my power now and you shall pay a dear penalty. All the more dearly shall you pay because you go about the streets armed with your crossbow at your side."
"My bow is used for hunting, your Lordship," said Tell proudly, "a right that all free men possess and have possessed from the very earliest times."
"I'll curb your right and your talk of freedom," said Gessler fiercely. "Yonder is your son. Now harken to your punishment. Take your bow and shoot an apple from the child's head."
Now the Governor never thought that Tell could hit so difficult a mark, and Tell himself, good shot as he was, quailed at shooting at so small a target, when the slightest slip would cause him to kill his beloved son. And he begged the Governor to take his property if he would or to do what he chose to his person, but to spare an innocent boy who had done no harm or wrong of any kind.
Gessler, however, was inexorable, and he mocked Tell with the utmost cruelty, telling him that such a mark should be easy for one whose fame as a bowman had traveled through all Switzerland, as Tell's had done.
"And mark well my words," said Gessler. "See that you hit the apple, for if you miss it, even by a hair's breadth, then you shall die and the boy with you."