However, when she took them out of the portable oven, nicely browned, and lifting the tops of each one dropped in a teaspoonful of grape jelly, he changed his mind.

“I’ll stay, if you don’t mind,” he said.  “Maybe some decent food will make me see things clearer.”

When Tish descended at six o’clock, she looked depressed.  “There is no cave,” she said, “although I have gone where a mountain goat would get dizzy.  But I have found a good place to hide the horses, where we can get them quickly when we need them.”

Aggie was scooping the inside out of her muffin, being unable to eat the crust, but she went quite pale.

“Tish,” she said, “you have some desperate plan in view, and I am not equal to it.  I am worn with travel and soft food, and am not as young as I once was.”

“Desperate nothing!” said Tish, pouring condensed milk into her tea.  “I am going to teach a lot of idiots a lesson, that’s all.  There should be one spot in America free from the advertising man and his schemes, and this is going to be it.  Commercialism,” she went on, growing oratorical, “does not belong here among these mighty mountains.  Once let it start, and these towering cliffs will be defaced with toothpowder and intoxicating-liquor signs.”

The young man knew the plans for the holdup even letter than Bill.  He was able to show us the exact spot which had been selected, and to tell us the hour at which the Ostermaier party was to cross the pass.

“They’ll lunch on the pass,” he said, “and, of course, they suspect nothing.  The young lady of whom I spoke to you will be one of their party.  She, however, knows what is coming, and is, indeed, a party to it.  The holdup will take place during luncheon.”

Here his voice broke, and he ate an entire muffin before he went on:  “The holdup will take place on the pass, the bandits having been hidden on this ‘bench’ right here.  Then the outlaws, having robbed the tourists, will steal the young lady and escape down the trail on the other side.  The guide, who is in the plot, will ride ahead in this direction and raise the alarm.  You understand,” he added, “that as it’s a put-up job, the tourists will get all their stuff back.  I don’t know how that’s to be arranged.”

“But the girl?” Tish asked.

“She’s to make her escape later,” Mr. Bell said grimly, “and will be photographed galloping down the trail, by another idiot with a camera, who, of course, just happens to be on the spot.  She’ll do it too,” he added with a pathetic note of pride in his voice.  “She’s got nerve enough for anything.”

He drew a long breath, and Aggie poured him a third cup of tea.

“I dare say this will finish everything,” he said dejectedly.  “I can’t offer her any excitement like this.  We live in a quiet suburb, where nobody ever fires a revolver except on the Fourth of July.”

“What she needs,” Tish said, bending forward, “is a lesson, Mr. Bell—­something to make her hate the very thought of a moving picture and shudder at the sound of a shot.”