"Unless you give me a full explanation of this whole affair I shall have you taken in custody by the authorities.
Understand you are to tell me everything." Dickinson, 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 fishing, 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 fashion," Dickinson 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 Dickinson reluctantly.