EXTRAIT: A CRY FOR HELP FLOATS THROUGH THE NIGHT. "Help!" Through the whole of the night, chopping, shifting winds had been tearing through the streets of London, now from the north, now from the south, now from the east, now from the west, now from all points of the compass at once; which last caprice--taking place for at least the twentieth time in the course of the hour which the bells of Big Ben were striking--was enough in itself to make the policeman on the beat doubtful of his senses. "What a chap hears in weather like this," he muttered, "and what he fancies he hears, is enough to drive him mad." He had sufficient justification for the remark, for there were not only the wild pranks of Boreas to torment and distract him, but there was the snow which, blown in fine particles from roofs and gables, and torn from nooks where it lay huddled up in little heaps against stone walls (for the reason that being blown there by previous winds it could get no further), seemed to take a spiteful pleasure in whirling into his face, which was tingling and smarting with cold, and as a matter of course into his eyes, which it caused to run over with tears. With a vague idea that some appeal had been made officially to him as a representative of law and order, he steadied himself and stood still for a few moments, with a spiritual cold freezing his heart, even as the temporal cold was freezing his marrow. "Help!" The bells of Big Ben were still proclaiming the hour of midnight. If a man at such a time might have reasonably been forgiven the fancy that old Westminster's tower had been invaded by an army of malicious witches, how much more readily might he have been forgiven for not being able to fix the direction from which this cry for help proceeded? Nay, he could scarcely have been blamed for doubting that the cry was human. For the third time-- "Help!" Then, so far as that appeal was concerned, silence. The cry was heard no more. The policeman still labored under a vague impression Benjamin Leopold Farjeon (12 May 1838 - 23 July 1903) was a British novelist, playwright, printer and journalist. As an author, he was known for his huge output. Life Farjeon was born in London to Dinah Levy and Jacob Farjeon, Orthodox Jews. He was raised in Whitechapel and had no formal secular education. At fourteen, he entered the office of the Nonconformist, a Christian journal, to learn the printing trade. He broke away from the strict faith of his father and in 1854 immigrated to Australia. During the voyage he was moved from steerage to cabin class because he had produced some numbers of a ship newspaper, the Ocean Record. Farjeon worked as a gold miner in Victoria (Australia), started a newspaper, then went to New Zealand in 1861. He settled at Dunedin, working as a journalist on the Otago Daily Times, edited by Julius Vogel. Farjeon became manager and sub-editor. He began writing novels and plays. He attracted the attention of Charles Dickens. In 1868, he returned to Britain and lived in London in the Adelphi Theatre. Over the next thirty-five years he produced nearly sixty novels. Many of his works were illustrated by his long-time friend Nicholas Chevalier. He died in Hampstead on 23 July 1903, aged 65.