Properties.loadFromXML NullPointerException with jUnit
===

I have the problem with loading properties from xml inside jUnit test (the same code works well without jUnit):

    public class InternetMapTest {
    
    private Properties properties;
    
    @Before
    public void readProperties() {

    try {
	ClassLoader loader = ClassLoader.getSystemClassLoader();
	InputStream stream = loader.getResourceAsStream("analyse.properties.xml");
	properties.loadFromXML(stream);
   ...


if I run test, I get


    java.lang.NullPointerException
    	at xxx.yyy.zzz.analyse.tests.InternetMapTest.readProperties(InternetMapTest.java:27)
    	at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
        ...
        ...
        at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.main(RemoteTestRunner.java:197)

Unfortunately, I can't identify the problem using this stack trace. First of all, I thought that the file was not found (it's located in /src/test/resources). But
   System.out.println(loader.getResource("analyse.properties.xml"));
returns correct file path.

Can somebody help, please?

I use STS 2.9.1 with Maven (plugin version 2.3.1, as I think) and jUnit 4.10 under Ubuntu 12.04 amd64.

Thank you in advance,
Kind Regards.