l-bag, with a big stone tied to it.

"I got an idea into my head. I took all he had on him from his boots to
his cap, and I hid them in the bake-house in the Martin wood behind the
farm-yard."

The old man stopped. The officers, speechless, looked at one another.
The examination was resumed, and this is what they were told.

* * * * *

Once he had accomplished this murder, the peasant lived with only one
thought: "To kill the Prussians!" He hated them with the sly and
ferocious hatred of a countryman who was at the same time covetous and
patriotic. He had got an idea into his head, as he put it. He waited for
a few days.

He was allowed to go and come freely, to go out and return just as he
pleased, as long as he displayed humility, submissiveness, and
complaisance towards the conquerors.

Now, every evening he saw the cavalrymen bearing dispatches leaving the
farmhouse; and he went out one night after discovering the name of the
village to which they were going, and after picking up by associating
with the soldiers the few words of German he needed.

He made his way through his farm-yard slipped into the wood, reached the
bake-house, penetrated to the end of the long passage, and having found
the clothes of the soldier which he had hidden there, he put them on.
Then, he went prowling about the fields, creeping along, keeping to the
slopes so as to avoid observation, listening to the least sounds,
restless as a poacher.

When he believed the time had arrived he took up his position at the
roadside, and hid himself in a clump of brushwood. He still waited. At
length, near midnight, he heard the galloping of a horse's hoofs on the
hard soil of the road. The old man put his ear to the ground to make
sure that only one cavalryman was approaching; then he got ready.

The Uhlan came on at a very quick pace, carrying some dispatches. He
rode forward with watchful eyes and strained ears. As soon as he was no
more than ten paces away, Pere Milon dragged himself across the road,
groaning: "Hilfe! Hilfe!" ("Help! help!")

The cavalryman drew up, recognized a German soldier dismounted, believed
that he was wounded, leaped down from his horse, drew near the prostrate
man, never suspecting anything, and, as he stooped over the stranger, he
received in the middle of the stomach the long curved blade of the
saber. He sank down without any death throes, merely quivering with a
few last shudders