lloping horse. The man put his ear to the ground in
order to make sure that only one horseman was approaching, then he got
ready.

An Uhlan came galloping along, carrying des patches. As he went, he
was all eyes and ears. When he was only a few feet away, Father Milon
dragged himself across the road, moaning: "Hilfe! Hilfe!" ( Help!
Help!) The horseman stopped, and recognizing a German, he thought he was
wounded and dismounted, coming nearer without any suspicion, and just
as he was leaning over the unknown man, he received, in the pit of his
stomach, a heavy thrust from the long curved blade of the sabre. He
dropped without suffering pain, quivering only in the final throes. Then
the farmer, radiant with the silent joy of an old peasant, got up again,
and, for his own pleasure, cut the dead man's throat. He then dragged
the body to the ditch and threw it in.

The horse quietly awaited its master. Father Milon mounted him and
started galloping across the plains.

About an hour later he noticed two more Uhlans who were returning
home, side by side. He rode straight for them, once more crying "Hilfe!
Hilfe!"

The Prussians, recognizing the uniform, let him approach without
distrust. The old man passed between them like a cannon-ball, felling
them both, one with his sabre and the other with a revolver.

Then he killed the horses, German horses! After that he quickly returned
to the woods and hid one of the horses. He left his uniform there and
again put on his old clothes; then going back into bed, he slept until
morning.

For four days he did not go out, waiting for the inquest to be
terminated; but on the fifth day he went out again and killed two more
soldiers by the same stratagem. From that time on he did not stop.
Each night he wandered about in search of adventure, killing Prussians,
sometimes here and sometimes there, galloping through deserted fields,
in the moonlight, a lost Uhlan, a hunter of men. Then, his task
accomplished, leaving behind him the bodies lying along the roads, the
old farmer would return and hide his horse and uniform.

He went, toward noon, to carry oats and water quietly to his mount, and
he fed it well as he required from it a great amount of work.

But one of those whom he had attacked the night before, in defending
himself slashed the old peasant across the face with his sabre.

However, he had killed them both. He had come back and hidden the horse
and put on his ordinary cloth