"Great God!" murmured Eliza, clinging anxiously to Elza's arm, "If he resists, he is lost."
"Here I am, my brave soldiers!" shouted Ulrich von Hohenberg a second time. "Come to me, my brave lads! I have been locked up here; hence, I cannot come to you. Come up to me, then. Knock the doors in, and deliver your captain."
"First, let them deliver themselves, sir," shouted Wallner up to him. He then turned once more to the soldiers. "Listen to what I am going to say to you in the name of my countrymen, in the name of the whole Tyrol," he shouted. "For four long years you have oppressed and maltreated us: you have insulted, humiliated, and mortified us every day. But we are Christians, and will not revenge ourselves; we want only our rights, our liberty, and our emperor. Therefore, if you submit willingly and with good grace to what cannot be helped, we will let you depart without punishing or injuring you in any way, and allow you to return to your accursed Bavaria. But first you will have to do two things, to wit: throw all your muskets out of the windows, and swear a solemn oath that you will no longer bear arms against the Tyrolese."
"You will never swear that oath, soldiers," shouted Ulrich von Hohenberg from his balcony. "You will keep the oath which you swore to your king and commander-in-chief. You will not incur the disgrace of surrendering to a crowd of rebellious peasants."
"No, no, we will not," shouted the soldiers to him; and thereupon they disappeared from the upper floor, and soon reappeared in dense groups at the windows of the lower story. These windows were only five feet above the ground, and they were therefore able to jump out of them.
"Shoot down the first soldier who jumps out of the window!" cried
Anthony Wallner to his sharpshooters.
The soldiers took no notice of his threats; a soldier appeared in each of the windows ready to risk the leap. One of them, more agile and intrepid than the others, was the first to jump down. Scarcely had his feet touched the ground, when a rifle crashed and a cloud of white smoke enveloped every thing for a moment. When it disappeared, the Bavarian soldier was seen to writhe on the ground in the agony of death, while one of the Tyrolese sharpshooters was quietly reloading his rifle.
But now crashed another shot, and the Tyrolese rifleman, pierced through the heart, reeled back into the arms of his friends with the last groan of death.
"Soldiers," cried Ulrich von Hohenberg, raising his discharged gun triumphantly, "I have avenged the death of your comrade. Now forward, jump down! Forward for your honor and your king!"
"Yes, forward for our honor and our king!" shouted the soldiers, and one of them jumped out of each of the windows.