The miller went to get soldiers and gendarmes. These took his daughter with them.
‘Do you know where they live?’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Will you show us where it is?’
‘I will show you where.’
She went with them into that large forest. They saw a beautiful stone palace. Three of them went in; they saw that there were a hundred brigands.
‘What shall we do now with these brigands?’
‘We will kill them,’ replied the soldiers.
They shot the whole lot of them; not one remained alive except the old peasant woman. Her too they would have killed, but the girl begged them, ‘Do not kill her, for it was she who saved my life.’
They enter one room, they see it is full of money. They pass into the other room, and it is full of linen clothes. They go into the third, and there they find a great number of peasants suspended from pegs along the walls. All that they found there they carried away—gold, silver, and sums of money. Then they set fire to the palace and burned it down. They returned home; and the miller’s daughter took the old peasant woman with her and kept her till her death, because she had saved her life.