"That's all very well, but I don't want you. You'd be in the way. Besides, I'm riding. You couldn't keep up with me."
"Can run fast. No mule can beat me."
"Nonsense! I shall be riding all day, and you'd be dead before night."
"I can get a mule, then."
"Where, may I ask?"
"From the Busne."
Jack knew that Busne was the gipsies' name for the Spaniards.
"That means that you would steal it, eh? Didn't I tell you that if you were caught stealing you'd be hanged, or at any rate soundly flogged?"
"Yes. Hanged!" He shrugged his shoulders. "Flogged!" He pulled aside his rags and showed the marks left by old thrashings on his skin.
"Incorrigible little imp!" muttered Jack in English. "Look here," he went on in Spanish, "you can't go with me; that's settled. You must go back to Salamanca. I'll give you a note to Ogbourne—"