Ten years have already passed away. One time twelve brigands, disguised as lords, came to this miller’s house, he being unaware who they were.
‘Will you give me your daughter in marriage?’ one of them asked him.
‘Why not?’ he made answer, ‘all the more willingly because she has pined for a great lord.’
This was the very brigand from whose head she had cut a piece of skin. But the miller’s daughter did not recognise him, and she consented to marry him. This girl begged her father to give her three bushels of oats. She got into the [[171]]carriage with these noblemen, and went off with them. Hardly had they got a league from the house when she took one handful after another of the oats and cast them on the road: this was to mark her route, and in order to recognise afterwards the way by which she had gone. She went on sowing these oats till they came to the forest where the brigands lived. She scattered the whole quantity.
Having got home, they made her come down out of the carriage. They went into the room with her. She sat down, and saw no one there but a solitary old peasant woman.
‘Do you recognise me?’ this brigand asked her.
‘No,’ she replied, ‘I do not recognise you at all.’
He showed her the part of his head where a piece of the skin had been cut off by her. It was only then that she recognised him. She was greatly alarmed at the sight of this brigand in the guise of a nobleman.
‘Keep quite calm,’ he said to her, ‘we are going to cut some stripes from your back.’[3]
‘Very well,’ she replied, ‘if I have deserved it, chop me up into little bits.’