"Can run fast.

A Bargain

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-"

"He'll flog me."

"No. I'll tell him to get you some clothes and see that you are fed, and to keep his eye on you till I get back. Now, will you promise me to keep out of mischief?"

"No."

"Impudent little beggar! I suppose you know no better. You know at any rate that my man will lay on pretty heavily if you plague him. Look, here's a silver peseta. I'll give you this if you promise to go back to Salamanca."

He held up the coin between finger and thumb. "Give it me," said Pepito.

"Promise."

I can't be

"I'll go with you, Señor," said the boy obstinately. "Don't you understand? It's impossible. clogged with you. Come now, here's the money. Cut away, and when I see you next take care that you've decent clothes on your back."

Jack rapidly scribbled a note, and gave it with the coin into the brown lean little paw, eagerly outstretched to receive it. Pepito stowed them both into a pocket he discovered somewhere among his rags, then grinned, and said:

"Now I run with Señor's mule."

Force majeure

"Confound you!" cried Jack, losing patience at last. "I won't have you with me."

He raised the switch which he had laid across the saddle and made to strike at the gipsy. Pepito looked in his face with an inscrutable expression in his dark eyes, shrank back from the expected blow, then slowly turned on his heel and slunk away in the direction of Salamanca.

"The obstinate little mule!" said Jack to himself as he watched him go. "I don't wonder that Giles has given him many a tanning. I'd sooner be haunted by a ghost."

As soon as Pepito was out of sight Jack remounted, and set the mule at a canter to make up for lost time.

CHAPTER V

A Roadside Adventure

FOR a few miles Jack followed the highroad, meeting no one but an old wizened woman staggering along under a basket-load of onions. Then, thinking it well, as he approached the district in which there was a possibility of encountering the enemy's vedettes, to avoid the main thoroughfare, he struck off to the right along what was little better than a cart track, discovering from his map that this would lead him to his destination by way of Pedroso, Cantalapiedra, and Carpio, villages which were scarcely likely to be selected as billeting-places by any considerable force. It was a dreary ride. The road was heavy with the recent rains. It passed through a country consisting partly of bare heath, partly of grain-fields, now black and desolate. He had started from Salamanca shortly after eleven o'clock, and, owing to interruptions and the state of the roads, it was nearly three in the afternoon before he arrived at Cantalapiedra, little more than half-way to Medina. By that time he was hungry, and his steed was both hungry and tired. Dismounting before a posada at the entrance to the town, he sent the mule to be fed and rubbed down, and went into the house to seek refreshment himself.

There was no other guest in the place, and the landlord, slow and stolid like a genuine Spaniard, showed neither pleasure nor displeasure at the appearance of a traveller. In reply to Jack's request for food, he brought, after some delay, a basin of very greasy soup of a reddish tinge, due to the saffron with which it had been liberally sprinkled, and a dirty carafe of violet-coloured wine, which Jack found, when he poured it out, almost thick enough to cut with a knife. The bread, however, was eatable, if a trifle salt, and Jack munched away with an appetite that evoked

A Spanish By-Road

a gleam of interest in the landlord's solemn eyes. He began to ask questions, and indeed to show himself inquisitive, remarking on the strange fact of a young man travelling alone through disturbed country at such a time. Jack good-humouredly parried enquiries that seemed too direct, merely explaining that he had been on a visit to Salamanca, and was riding across country because, having heard rumours that the French were in possession of Valladolid, he had no wish to fall into their hands. The landlord dryly told him that travelling anywhere in Spain was rather dangerous for a man with good clothes on his back and money in his pocket, for if he escaped the French he might fall in with bandits, and there was little to choose between them when plunder was in question. In answer to this Jack opened his coat and showed the man the butt of a big Spanish pistol.

"Even a peaceful merchant," he said with a laugh, "may prove an awkward customer to tackle."

The landlord shrugged.

"One against a troop of French cavalry, or a gang of bandits, would fare rather badly," he said.

you will want a bed to-night, Señor?"

"Not I. I'm going to push on to Medina."

"I suppose

"The saints help you to find your way in the dark, then!"

"Oh! I shall find it. The road is direct, you know, and my mule will not wander."

He set off after an hour's rest and rode on in increasing darkness. What the landlord had said about brigands gave him little concern. For one thing, the mule trod almost silently on the sodden road, and he had removed the bell from its neck; for another, he had avoided the highway, and did not suppose that much booty was ever to be obtained on the by-roads; and lastly, he trusted to his wits, his mule, and his pistol. As he rode on, the air grew colder and the sky darker; there was no moon, and a thickening haze lay over the fields to right and left of the road. It was impossible to proceed at more than a walking pace, except at risk of breaking the mule's knees in a rut or ditch. To divert his thoughts from the cold and the unpleasantness of his journey, he ran over in his mind the events of the last few days. He dwelt partic

Negotiations

ularly on the strange message he had received from Don Fernan Alvarez. "Palafox the man, Palafox the name!" -what could it mean? How did it concern his old playmate Juanita, whom he remembered, a little black-eyed child, clambering on his father's knee, and listening with her finger in her mouth to the stories told her by Mr. Lumsden, so merry and frank compared with her stiff, stately, solemn father. Palafox!-he was a young general, with a brilliant reputation; Jack had heard Colonel Beckwith give high praise to his strenuous defence of Saragossa against Verdier; but what likelihood was there that the chances of the campaign would give Jack an opportunity of meeting him! Suppose he did meet him, what

"Buenas noches, caballero!" said a thick guttural voice at his mule's head, breaking into his meditation, and giving him a momentary shock.

"Buenas noches, hombre!" he replied.

The mule had stopped short. Jack saw dimly, right in front of him, a thick-set figure clad in a heavy cloak, his head covered with a pointed large-brimmed hat, reminding the rider of pictures he had seen of Italian brigands. "O Señor caballero," said the man, "will you have the charity to tell a poor wayfarer the time?"

Jack was on the point of pulling out his big huntingwatch, but it struck him suddenly that it was advisable to be on his guard until he was sure of his man.

"Somewhere about seven o'clock, I fancy," he said courteously. "You are right in my way, my friend." "Sí, caballero, but it is my way as well as yours."

"It is wide enough for both of us," rejoined Jack with a smile; "and as I have some miles to ride, I shall be obliged to you if you'll stand away and let me get on." The man did not budge, but brought his left hand from beneath his cloak and seized the off rein.

"Come, my friend, don't delay me. 'Tis a cold night, and the sooner I reach my journey's end the better I shall be pleased."

Jack spoke quietly and politely as before, but he was watching the fellow with the wariness of a hawk.

"Tis cold for me also, caballero; a fire and warm drink await me yonder. I am going to fight the accursed French, and it strikes me a mule like yours will serve me