The men willingly stood aside. Now be was close behind Wallner, and, interrupting him in his speech, he whispered to him: "I come from Andreas Hofer; he sends you his greetings and this paper. I have run all night to bring it to you."
He handed a folded paper to Wallner, who opened it with hands trembling with impatience.
It was Andreas Hofer's "open order."
Wallner's face brightened up, he cast a fiery glance around the place filled with his friends, and fixed his flashing eyes then on the hat of the bailiff who had rebuked the young Tyrolese in so overbearing a manner. At a bound he was by his side, drove the bailiff's round official hat with one blow of his fist over his head, so that his whole face disappeared in the crown, and exclaimed in a loud, ringing voice:
"Villain! do you not see the Tyrolese?"
A loud outburst of exultation greeted Wallner's bold deed, and all the men crowded around him, ready to protect Anthony Wallner, and looking at the tax-collector with flashing, threatening eyes.
The latter seemed as if stunned by the sudden change in Wallner's demeanor, and he looked in dismay at the audacious innkeeper who was standing close in front of him and staring at him with a laughing face.
"What does this mean?" he asked at length, in a tremulous voice.
"It means that we want to be Tyrolese again," shouted Anthony Wallner, exultingly. "It means that we will no longer submit to brutal treatment at the hands of your Bavarian bailiffs, and that we will treat you now as you Boafoks have treated us for five years past." [Footnote: Boafok, the nickname which the Tyrolese gave to the Bavarians at that time. It signifies "Bavarian pigs.">[
"For God's sake, how have we treated you, then?" asked the tax- collector, drawing back from the threatening face of Anthony Wallner toward his bailiffs.