"It's failing already--the cables tell me so. Great extremities of temperature are as sure a call to discontented labour as the spring to the cuckoo. Let this go on a week and there'll be something like a national panic. Then you'll see who believes in universal peace, and I guess you'll see it quick. For my part, if I were a free agent, I'd pack and be off to-night. But I'm not a free agent, and there's work for me to do; mighty serious work, I know. Perhaps I'll ask you to help me. You're just the man for the job. You step quick, and don't talk on the road." "It doesn't concern the weather, of course?" "It concerns the people, Mr. Trevelle. I'll tell you when the time comes. We are in London now, I think. My address is the Savoy Hotel. Send me yours there. To-night I'm off to Hampstead to see a little girl. She's just out of Ragusa, and it's to be imagined what this means to her. The north is merciless to the south in that respect. I'm afraid of the news I shall hear; more afraid than I can say." He fell to silence suddenly as the train crossed Cannon Street bridge and the face of the river was disclosed. A drizzle of snow had begun to fall again, and many hummocks of block ice floated beneath the bridges. Such a night had not been seen since Victoria was Queen and Melbourne her Minister. They entered the station to the raucous shouts of the newsboys, crying the latest tidings of the frost. III In the suburbs, there was little real understanding of the momentous truth. Kensington, Paddington, and Hampstead were frozen out, but their young people enjoyed the predicament. Weary water-men plugged the mains and wondered if Christmas half-crowns would compensate them for the trouble. Plumbers left footprints on the silks of time and had become great personages. The roads were like iron; the wood pavement impossible but for the sand which covered it. Even the meanest wore some kind of shabby furs, while the well-to-do were so many bundles of fine skins, from which rubicund jowls peeped out.