HOME CHIMES Will in future Only be issued Monthly, and in order that it may still retain its place as one of THE BEST AND CHEAPEST MAGAZINES, It will be Illustrated. It will consist of So pages. The Price will be lowered to FOUR PENCE. The February Number, commencing a New Volume, enables our friends, subscribers, and well-wishers, to mention this magazine favourably to their friends. HOME CHIMES. A Boarding-house Romance . . .45 A Golden Wedding. Charles Kruger . 192 A History from the West . . • .38b' Aias! Poor Ghost. " Alison " . . . 507 A Man of Business. H. B. Clarke . . 431 An Awkward Situation. H. C. Davidson . 299 An Irishwoman's Story. J. M. Callwell . 397 A Reminiscence. J. E. Panton . . . 495 A Shady Street. S. Leighton . . .441 A Time of Danger. Philip B. Marston . 19 A Tontine of Two. H. C. Davidson . . 370 A Tree in the City. E. M. Thompson . 75 CnnivTMAS Eve. Frances Hurrell . . 514 For the King. J. Leith Derwent . . 375 Found Drowned. Kitson Stewart. 243, 282, 294 Uuv Ashto.n's Troubles. By Eugene Shel- Hetty's Hero. "Alison" . . . .178 Is Shallow Waters. A. Armitt. 14, 40, 51, 83 Ju the Days of the Crimean War. Grace Jons Hcbbabd's Husbands. J. M. Barrie . 305 Lctciit.va; or, The Blue Lake. By A. Vocklington. 23, 63, 72,104,126, 141, 162 Jluor Bombazine's Proposal. H. V. Rees 155 Moses Yonngashe. R. Forteseue . . 463 Prohibition. Philip Bourke Marston. The Colonel Kantorowicz. Edwin Whelp- The Family Scapegrace. J. E. Panton . 12 The Ghost of Dina Vandoren. X.Robertson 551 The Haunted House. Edwin Whelpton . 79 The Mill Farm. Mrs. Gregg . . . 58 The Mysterious Absinthe Drinker. A. J The Mystery of Compton Place. Laura Valentine . . ' . 67, 100, 180, 149 The Mystery of Sir Oliver Valaynes . 353, 383 The Prince of Fable " Cheveley." 419, 458, 472 The Strange Adventures of a Sonnet. Francis Watt . . : . .109 The Weinstadt Professor A. Calthrop. . 474 The Whirligig of Time. H. E. Clarke . 265 Three Offers. E. Chilton . 188, 203, 233, 261 Was He a Fool ? Evelyn Fletcher . 519, 543 When the Snow melts. J. M. Barrie. .532 " Yes, Sir." By Ina Stanhope . . .309 ARTICLES, ESSAYS, &c. An Auld Licht Minister. J. M. Barrie . 248 An Auld Licht Official. J. M. Barrie . 206 Anecdotes of Lemaitre . . . .176 Anecdotes of Medical Celebrities. . 396, 565 A Kiver Love Story. Mary Fitzgibbon . 167 Auld Robin Gray. Paul Benison . . 88 A Wet Day at Bristol. Paul Benison. . 230 Captain William Hawkins. James Hntton 242 Character in Colour. Dr. Heinemann . 327 Christmas Decorations. Charles Worte. . 542 Christmas in the West Couutry . . . 554 Church Ales, William Andrews . .154 Curates Wanted in the Olden Time . .218 Curiosities of Slavery in England . . 364 Dress and Deportment. Jerome K. Jerome . Edible Birds' Nests. E. Goatley Etiquette of the Faculty . • . Gamekeeper Gossip. Jno. Sutherland Ghosts, Bores and Philosophers . Ghosts Whom We Have Met. J. Bayford Harrison Holidays in the Pyrenees. J. W. Anderson Idle Thoughts by an Idle Fellow. Jerome On Memory On Dress and Deportment . POETRY. The Death of Summer. J. E. Panton The Maiden's Tryst. Baroness Swift The Old, Old Story. Frances Hurrell \JI R. O'CONNELL was an Irishman, born and 1\ J. bred near Belfast, but with the exception of his earlier years, all his life had been spent in England, and he hated his native country and his compatriots, as only a renegade can. He even went so far as to try to establish a claim to be considered a Scotchman, on the strength of the fact that the north of Ireland was eolonized by the Scotch, and perhaps there was after all more plausibility in this claim than at first appears, as it is an undoubted fact that while he possessed the illogical violence and emotional incontinence of the one people, he superadded to them a total lack of polish and of geniality, and a sordid parsimony more characteristic of the other. In a word, he had the faults of both, and the good qualities of neither. A tall, lean, ricketty, Bcarecrow of a man, with a pallid bad-tempered face, he looked when yon met him in his professional suit of rusty black, like a grotesque caricature escaped from a magiclantern slide; and his painful efforts to invest his ungainly frame with some sort of dignity, only made the resemblance more striking. He was a lawyer, and lived with his wife and two daughters in a highly respectable suburb j a howling wildernessof unadorned bricks and mortar, near enough to the city to be dirty and unquiet, and too far away to be convenient. His marriage was so exactly characteristic of the unfortunate mingling of nationalities mentioned above, that it must be briefly alluded to. The Irishman in him fell violently in love with a pretty, penniless girl; the Scotchman in him pointed out that as he had no money himself, he must marry some one who had. The Irishman led him to compromise himself more or less with his charmer ; the Scotchman caused him to marry some one else reputed to be rich. But the Irishman of course made no proper inquiries as to the lady's property, and when the Scotchman discovered very shortly after marriage that it amounted to some one hundred and thirty pounds all told, why then Irishman and Scotchman combined to heartily detest the innocent cause of their disappointment thenceforward for ever. This was hard on Mrs. O'Connell, whose chief fault at starting was simply a total absence of intellect; but years of miserable pinching and repining and wrangling had soured her temper, and made her querulous and cunning, while leaving her as empty-headed as ever. Now that her two daughters were grown up, and sho had little manual labour, her mental vacuity became a nuisance even to herself, and she was compelled, in mere self-defence, to set up as a professional invalid, which occupation, combined with tittle-tattle, scandal, and small scheming, enabled her to kill time, and get through life in a more or less miserable fashion. Constauce was the elder of her two daughters, and was commonly reported to take after her father. Mrs. O'Connell had therefore, to equalize matters, claimed the younger, Violet, as resembling her. Gradually the girls had grown into their parts in some degree, Constance being rude and dogmatic, and Violet an inconsequent and reckless chatterer. Thus all was as it should be. Now, Mr. O'Connell, being but a slow and sleepy lawyer, had little practice, and so had for some years eked out his professional income by taking a lodger, and at the time this story begins the occupant of the spare bedroom was Guy Ashton, a young gentleman who had been with them a year, but who remained an entire mystery to them all, and who, being rather shy and undemonstrative, was more or less passed over and ignored by the whole family. This mode of treatment, it must be remarked, Guy seemed to find exactly to his taste, but it was not to continue, and in this wise was the end of it. Mrs. O'Connell had been spending the evening with her bosom friend Mrs. Stuffins, and came home so full of news that it was a physical impossibility for her even to contain herself until she had taken off her bonnet and shawl. She burst into the drawing-room, where her two daughters were at needlework, and her husband sat reading. " Shut the door, can't ye ? " was the polite greeting of the latter, emphasized by a growl. " I've been so taken aback," proclaimed Mrs. O'Connell excitedly, " it's made my heart so bad, and my head is fit to split. When I got to Mrs. Stuffins1 s who should be there but her brother Edward on a visit, and I must tell you his wife is very ill, and the doctor don't know what's the matter with her, and she is coming up to London to see a physician. I recommended Parks, but her own doctor says Vincent, who, as I told him, mismanaged my poor mother's case, as you know, James, and she might have been alive at this day, though she did certainly go to Smith first, and the garden-roller went over her big toe " " What are ye talkin' about ? " snarled O'Connell. " What's your mother's big toe to do with it ? If ye've anything to say, say it j if not, leave me alone." " Now, I'll not speak another word," exclaimed the aggrieved lady, with great bitterness. " You always interrupt me, James, just as I am coming to the point, and then blame me for not being quicker." A snarl of contempt was her husband's only reply, and then the two girl's broke in. '• How absurd you are, ma! " said Constance tartly. " There, it's always the way," cried Violet. " Directly I get interested in anything—at least before 1 get interested in it—somebody says something to somebody else, and then somebody else —Oh, I don't know—but it's very provoking." " Your mother always makes such tremendous rigmaroles about nothing at all," growled the old man. " There's no getting a simple story out of her." Mrs. O'Connell here flounced out of the room in the highest dudgeon, followed in a minute or two by her daughters, who were as eager to hear gossip as she was to tell it. Constance returned in about half an hour's time, and found her father at the same page of his book as when she went. The fact was the old fellow was as curious as anybody, but he could not very well show it, alter his affectation of indifference. " Well, have ye heard the wonderful story ?— some stupid nonsense, I'll warrant," he said, struggling to appear careless. " It's only about Mr. Ashton," replied Constance, resuming her work. Her father shifted irritably in his chair for a few seconds, growling and snorting in an uncomfortable fashion, while Constance, bending over her work, seemed to derive much amusement from her own thoughts. " Well let's have it," cried the old man at last, in a hoarse voice, " Why don't ye speak instead of sitting grinning there ? " "I thought you didn't want to near," said Constance coldly. " But I do," roared her father in a fury. " It seems Mr. Edward Kingknows Mr. Ashton's relations," said Constance in the same tone, " His father i3 a baronet, very rich, living in the north of England, near Durham I think—Guy is second son, but he has property of his own, left him by an aunt. Guy wanted to be an engineer, his relations wanted him to go to college, so he did neither till he was twenty-one, when he came to London to study with a famous firm of engineers, and in the end it's supposed he will go into partnership with them." O'Connell's eyes had assumed the shape and dimensions of small saucers. " I expect it's all rubbish," he muttered, but in his secret heart he was far from thinking so. He called on Mr. King next morning taking a photograph of his lodger from Constance's album, to to make assurance doubly sure, and found the story was substantially true. " A year thrown away and wasted," he said to himself in anguish as he went home, " I made sure he was a poor devil of a clerk, or something of the kind. I've even snubbed him when I thought he seemed to be getting too thick with those girls." He groaned aloud at the recollection. And now a swift and sudden change came over the behaviour of the family to Guy Ashton, but he was too much wrapt up in his studies at the time to take any particular notice of it. One thing, however, he could not help seeing, namely, that Constance O'Connell was left on his hands to a considerable extent. He found with surprise that he was in the habit of walking to and from church with her on Sunday; he observed that she had taken to playing the music he liked, which she had previously despised as " slow," that if she had two tickets for a concert or a theatre, none of the others could ever accompany her, and as she would be dreadfully disappointed at not going, he was compelled to volunteer, and sundry other little things of the same sort. The ordinary smart youth would have taken in the situation at a glance, but Guy laboured under two disadvantages; in the first place, he was entirely deluded as to the sort of people he lived with, in the second, he was a genuine enthusiast as regarded his chosen profession. The former circumstance made him unsuspicious, and the latter kept him so. Things went on in this way for some months, and Mrs. O'Connell waxed impatient. Nothing seemed to come of it all. But her husband bade her mind her own business, and leave the affair to his superior skill. His confidence in himself was well justified, for though he had no wide knowledge of the world, he had that instinctive sympathy with the baser part of man's nature which often does duty for it reasonably well. " Let 'em alone," he said. " He'll take fire sooner or later." But about this time Guy was rudely awakened to a sense of his position. He used to avoid O'Connell's friends as much as possible, as they did not seem to be desirable people to know, but one of them, a fat unctuous plebeian named Mullins, declined to be avoided. " Well, Ashton," he said one day, meeting Guy |