“Yes,” I returned.  “I thought I heard you inquiring for—­”

“Well, m’ friend, you can sting me!” he interrupted with condescending jocularity.  “My style French does f’r them camels up in Paris all right.  Me at Nice, Monte Carlo, Chantilly—­bow to the p’fess’r; he’s right!  But down here I don’t seem to be gud enough f’r these sheep-dogs; anyway they bark different.  I’m lukkin’ fer a hotel called Les Trois Pigeons.”

“I am going there,” I said; “I will show you the way.”

“Whur is’t?” he asked, not moving.

I pointed to the lights of the inn, flickering across the fields.  “Yonder—­beyond the second turn of the road,” I said, and, as he showed no signs of accompanying me, I added, “I am rather late.”

“Oh, I ain’t goin’ there t’night.  It’s too dark t’ see anything now,” he remarked, to my astonishment.  “Dives and the choo-choo back t’ little ole Trouville f’r mine!  I on’y wanted to take a luk at this pigeon-house joint.”

“Do you mind my inquiring,” I said, “what you expected to see at Les Trois Pigeons?”

“Why!” he exclaimed, as if astonished at the question, “I’m a tourist.  Makin’ a pedestrun trip t’ all the reg’ler sights.”  And, inspired to eloquence, he added, as an afterthought:  “As it were.”

“A tourist?” I echoed, with perfect incredulity.

“That’s whut I am, m’ friend,” he returned firmly.  “You don’t have to have a red dope-book in one hand and a thoid-class choo-choo ticket in the other to be a tourist, do you?”

“But if you will pardon me,” I said, “where did you get the notion that Les Trois Pigeons is one of the regular sights?”

“Ain’t it in all the books?”

“I don’t think that it is mentioned in any of the guide-books.”

“No!  I didn’t say it was, m’ friend,” he retorted with contemptuous pity.  “I mean them history-books.  It’s in all o’ them!”

“This is strange news,” said I.  “I should be very much interested to read them!”

“Lookahere,” he said, taking a step nearer me; “in oinest now, on your woid:  Didn’ more’n half them Jeanne d’Arc tamales live at that hotel wunst?”

“Nobody of historical importance—­or any other kind of importance, so far as I know—­ever lived there,” I informed him.  “The older portions of the inn once belonged to an ancient farm-house, that is all.”

“On the level,” he demanded, “didn’t that William the Conker nor none o’ them ancient gilt-edges live there?”

“No.”

“Stung again!” He broke into a sudden loud cackle of laughter.  “Why! the feller tole me ’at this here Pigeon place was all three rings when it come t’ history.  Yessir!  Tall, thin feller he was, in a three-button cutaway, English make, and kind of red-complected, with a sandy MUS-tache,” pursued the pedestrian, apparently fearing his narrative might lack colour.  “I met him right comin’ out o’ the Casino