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 clothes again; but as he reached home he began to feel faint, and had dragged himself as far as the stable, being unable to reach the house.

They had found him there, bleeding, on the straw.

When he had finished his tale, he suddenly lifted up his head and looked proudly at the Prussian officers.

The colonel, who was gnawing at his mustache, asked: 

“You have nothing else to say?”

“Nothing more; I have finished my task; I killed sixteen, not one more or less.”

“Do you know that you are going to die?”