Java properties and UTF-8

Introduction
There is an evergreen problem how to read Java properties from UTF-8 files. The source file should be ISO 8859-1 oriented and even overmighty Hercules cannot contend that.
Solution
But I found simply method which works for me. Just read a file in standard way, change all characters above 128 to Unicode escaped sequence and push through Properties.load method. Source file is available here.

public class ReadUTF8Properties { 

        private static String getFileContent(String name) throws IOException {
// does not work in Google App Engine, use Guava goodies            
//              return new String(Files.readAllBytes(Paths.get(name)));
            return Files.toString(new File(name),  Charsets.UTF_8);
        }

        private static String toLatin1(String s) {
                StringBuilder b = new StringBuilder();

                for (char c : s.toCharArray()) {
                        if (c >= 256 && c < 1000)
                                // 3 digits, add one leading 0
                                b.append("\\u0").append(Integer.toHexString(c));
                        else if (c >= 1000)
                                // 4 digits
                                b.append("\\u").append(Integer.toHexString(c));
                        else
                                b.append(c);
                }
                return b.toString();
        }

        public static Properties readProperties(String propName) throws IOException {

                Properties prop = new Properties();
                String p = toLatin1(getFileContent(propName));
                prop.load(new StringReader(p));
                return prop;
        }

}