d; 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 into the woods, found the dead
man's clothes and put them on. Then he began to crawl through the
fields, following along the hedges in order to keep out of sight,
listening to the slightest noises, as wary as a poacher.

As soon as he thought the time ripe, he approached the road and hid
behind a bush. He waited for a while. Finally, toward midnight, he heard
the sound of a ga