"You may have a holiday and may go where you please with the schoolmaster. I will attend to the cows all the day."
So they had taken a lunch and had climbed to the summit of the mountain. Their kind teacher had told them stories of the flowers and the stones.
"They never seemed so much alive to me before," said Carl, as they sat resting on a big gray rock, far up above the pastures. "I like to hear you talk in school, dear master, but it is far better up here among the grand mountains and in the fresh air. Perhaps William Tell himself once stood on this very spot."
"It is quite likely," replied the schoolmaster. "You know that his home was not many miles from our village. He was never so happy as when wandering among the mountains. Those were wonderful times in which he lived. But there is the same feeling now as then. We Swiss love freedom best of all, and are ever ready to give our lives for it, if there be need."
"How cruel the Austrians were! They thought that because theirs was a large and powerful country they could do with us as they pleased. But they found themselves mistaken after awhile, didn't they?" said Franz.
"Yes, my boy, but never forget that our freedom started in the work of three men, and three only, who joined together with brave hearts. They worked with no selfish feeling, and, before the end came, they had filled all Switzerland with the daring to be free."
"Yes, yes, we will always remember that. And only think! one of those three men lived here in our Canton. I am always proud to think of it."
"Boys, look at our country now, and then turn back to the sad times long ago. Can you imagine the way those three men felt when they met in the dark night on the field of Rütli? Can you not see them pledging themselves to their country in throwing off the yoke of Austria?
"They hated their rulers so much that a peacock was not allowed to live in Switzerland. That was, you know, because a peacock feather was the emblem of Austria."