CHAPTER III.
The Famous Conrad Lagrange When the young man reached the hotel, he went at once to his room, where he passed the time between the hour of his arrival and the evening meal.
Upon his return to the lobby, the first object that attracted his eyes was the uncouth figure of the man whom he had seen at the depot, and who had directed him to the hotel.
That oddly appearing individual, his brier pipe still in his mouth and the Irish Setter at his feet, was standing--or rather lounging--at the clerk's counter, bending over the register; an attitude which--making his skeleton-like form more round shouldered than ever--caused him to present the general outlines of a rude interrogation point.
In the dining-room, a few minutes later, the two men sat at adjoining tables; and the young man heard his neighbor bullying the waiters and commenting in an audible undertone, upon every dish that was served to him--swearing by all the heathen gods, known and unknown, that there was nothing fit to eat in the house; and that if it were not for the fact that there was no place else in the cursed town that served half so good, he would not touch a mouthful in the place.

Then, to the other's secret amusement he fell to right heartily and made an astonishing meal of the really excellent viands he had so roundly vilified.
Dinner over, the young man went with his cigar to the long veranda; intent upon enjoying the restful quiet of the evening after the tiresome days on the train.

Carrying a chair to an unoccupied corner, he had his cigar just nicely under way when the Irish Setter--with all the dignity of his royal blood--approached.

Resting a seal-brown head, with its long silky ears, confidently upon the stranger's knee, the dog looked up into the man's face with an expression of hearty good-fellowship in his soft, golden-brown eyes that was irresistible.
"Good dog," said the man, heartily, "good old fellow," and stroked the sleek head and neck, affectionately.
A whiff of pipe smoke drifted over his shoulder, and he looked around.

The dog's master stood just behind him; regarding him with that quizzing, half pathetic, half humorous, and altogether cynical expression.
The young man who had been so unresponsive to the advances of his fellow passengers, for some reason--unknown, probably, to himself--now took the initiative.