Part 36 (1/2)

Understand you are to tell me everything.”

d.i.c.kinson, however, seeing that Miss Elting would admit of no trifling, decided that it would be better to make a clean breast of the matter.

”The Indian's name is Charlie Lavaille,” he began sullenly, ”though he's commonly called French Charlie. He makes a sort of living at fis.h.i.+ng, and he hired the houseboat from me.”

”Then you rented the boat to some one else, and afterwards turned it over to us without letting us know?” asked Miss Elting.

”He rented the houseboat after a fas.h.i.+on,” d.i.c.kinson explained lamely, ”though he didn't pay any rent down, and hasn't paid a penny since. He was going to pay me, he said, at the end of the season. Now, of course, when you came up here with a message from your brother, and claimed the boat, I had to let you have it. If Charlie had paid any money, I would have refunded it to him; but as he hadn't paid a cent there was nothing to do but to turn the boat over to you.”

”And you left us in ignorance of all this, when the knowledge of it might have saved us much trouble, let alone the danger we ran and the final loss of the boat?” Miss Elting asked accusingly.

”Well, you see, it was hard to explain,” replied Dee d.i.c.kinson reluctantly. ”At any rate, at the time I thought it would be hard to explain, so I let it go without telling you. I tried to make it all clear to Charlie that, having paid no money, he had no claim on the boat, but you can't explain a thing like that to an Indian. So Charlie wouldn't listen to anything I could say. The half-breed isn't right in his head, anyway, I'm inclined to think.”

”So, without warning, you left us at the mercy of a possibly insane Indian?” Miss Elting persisted. ”Mr. d.i.c.kinson, you have acted in a very cowardly fas.h.i.+on toward women who had been sent here believing that they were to be in a measure under your protection. You should be compelled to suffer for it. I shall write to my brother at once and tell him just what sort of man you are.”

d.i.c.kinson cringed at Miss Elting's severe words and fairly slunk from the guardian's presence at the close of the interview.

The village constable and one of his men returned to the camp with Miss Elting and the boys to take charge of the Indian. He was locked up for a few days by the authorities at Wantagh, then subjected to a rigid examination by a medical board, and being p.r.o.nounced insane, was sent away to one of the state inst.i.tutions for the demented.

The Meadow-Brook Girls and Miss Elting said good-bye to the Tramp Club that evening and spent the night at the village hotel.

”We've had a fine time at any rate,” said Jane McCarthy as they discussed all over again the exciting happenings of the day before, at breakfast the next morning. ”Where are we going next? Vacation isn't half over yet.”