dered and
affrighted.

The colonel went on:

"Do you also know who killed all the scouts who have been found dead, for
a month, throughout the country, every morning?"

The old man answered with the same stupid look:

"I did."

"You killed them all?"

"Uh huh! I did."

"You alone? All alone?"

"Uh huh!"

"Tell me how you did it."

This time the man seemed moved; the necessity for talking any length of
time annoyed him visibly. He stammered:

"I dunno! I simply did it."

The colonel continued:

"I warn you that you will have to tell me everything. You might as well
make up your mind right away. How did you begin?"

The man cast a troubled look toward his family, standing close behind
him. He hesitated a minute longer, and then suddenly made up his mind to
obey the order.

"I was coming home one night at about ten o'clock, the night after you
got here. You and your soldiers had taken more than fifty ecus worth of
forage from me, as well as a cow and two sheep. I said to myself: 'As
much as they take from you; just so much will you make them pay back.'
And then I had other things on my mind which I will tell you. Just then I
noticed one of your soldiers who was smoking his pipe by the ditch behind
the barn. I went and got my scythe and crept up slowly behind him, so
that he couldn't hear me. And I cut his head off with one single blow,
just as I would a blade of grass, before he could say 'Booh!' If you
should look at the bottom of the pond, you will find him tied up in a
potato-sack, with a stone fastened to it.

"I got an idea. I took all his clothes, from his boots to his cap, and
hid them away in the little wood behind the yard."

The old man stopped. The officers remained speechless, looking at each
other. The questioning began again, and this is what they learned.

Once this murder committed, the man had lived with this one thought:
"Kill the Prussians!" He hated them with the blind, fierce hate of the
greedy yet patriotic peasant. He had his idea, as he said. He waited
several days.

He was allowed to go and come as he pleased, because he had shown himself
so humble, submissive and obliging to the invaders. Each night he saw the
outposts leave. One night he followed them, having heard the name of the
village to which the men were going, and having learned the few words of
German which he needed for his plan through associating with the
soldiers.

He left through the back yard, slipped in