THE
STRAND MAGAZINE
An Illustrated Monthly
Vol. 5, Issue. 29.
May 1893
Contents
In The Shadow Of The Sierras.
The Royal Humane Society II.
Shafts from an Eastern Quiver XI.--In Quest of the Lost Galleon
Zig-Zags at the Zoo: Marsupial
Portraits of Celebrities at Different Times of their Lives.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes XVIII.--The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual
From Behind the Speaker's Chair V.
At Dead of Night.
Illustrated Interviews: XXII.--Sir Robert Rawlinson
Beauties:—Children.
The Adjutant's Love-story.
The Queer Side of Things.
"EXCUSE OUR INTRUSION, MADAM."(In the Shadow of the Sierras.)
By Iza Duffus Hardy.
Barbara Thorne sat leaning her head on her hand, looking at a photographthat lay on the table beneath her eyes. She had not intended to look forthat when she pulled out a dusty drawer full of old letters, papers,and account-books to arrange and set in order. But when in the course ofher rummaging and tidying she found that picture in her hand, she pausedin her task. The neglected drawer stood open, with its dusty packets androlls of faded papers. Barbara had forgotten it and all else around her.
She sat there lost in memory, her eyes fixed upon the "counterfeitpresentment" of the face that once had been all the world to her. Shedid not often think of Oliver Desmond now; to think of him meant onlypain—pain of outraged pride and wounded love. She had outgrown the timewhen she could not tear her thoughts from him, when his face was in her"mind's eye" by night and day, and yet she shrank with a shudderingrevolt of anguish from those pictures of the past which she could notbanish. For the memory that was the locked-up skeleton of her life—thatrattled its dead bones to-day as Oliver Desmond's pictured eyes smiledinto hers—was a cruel memory indeed, of grief and wrong and bitterhumiliation, of broken troth and shattered faith, insulted love, andcrushed and martyred pride. The blow that had rankled like iron in herheart for years was base and cowardly as a stab in the back fr