your Mr. Oliver."

"He is not my Mr. Oliver," said the girl. "I never want to see him
again. I--I hate him."

"You haven't got much mind or you couldn't change it so quickly."

She looked sulky again, and said she'd thank us for the ring, which was
hers and she could prove it.

But Tish sternly refused. "It's my private opinion," she observed, "that
it is Mrs. Ostermaier's, and she has not worn it openly because of the
congregation talking quite considerably about her earrings, and not
caring for jewelry on the minister's wife. That's what I think."

Shortly after that we heard a horse loping along the road. It came
nearer, and then left the trail and came toward the fire. Tish picked up
one of the extra revolvers and pointed it. It was Mr. Oliver!

"Throw up your hands!" Tish called. And he did it. He turned a sort of
blue color, too, when he saw us, and all the men with their hands up.
But he looked relieved when he saw the girl.

"Thank Heaven!" he said. "The way I've been riding this country--"

"You rode hard enough away from the pass," she replied coldly.

We took a revolver away from him and lined him up with the others. All
the time he was paying little attention to us and none at all to the
other men. But he was pleading with the girl.

"Honestly," he said, "I thought I could do better for everybody by doing
what I did. How did I know," he pleaded, "that you were going to do such
a crazy thing as this?"

But she only stared at him as if she hated the very ground he stood on.

"It's a pity," Tish observed, "that you haven't got your camera along.
This would make a very nice picture. But I dare say you could hardly
turn the crank with your hands in the air."

We searched him carefully, but he had only a gold watch and some money.
On the chance, however, that the watch was Mr. Ostermaier's, although
unlikely, we took it.

I must say he was very disagreeable, referring to us as highwaymen and
using uncomplimentary language. But, as Tish observed, we might as well
be thorough while we were about it.

For the nonce we had forgotten the other man. But now I noticed that the
pseudo-bandits wore a watchful and not unhopeful air. And suddenly one
of them whistled--a thin, shrill note that had, as Tish later remarked,
great penetrative power without being noisy.

"That's enough of that," she said. "Aggie, take another of these guns
and point them both at these gentlemen. If they whistle again, shoot.
A