Tom Slade in the North Woods by Percy Keese Fitzhugh

I must now tell you of an incident which shook me as nothing else in my whole life has ever shaken me, and the meaning of it was not clear to me till long afterward. I suppose that the gloom of that cheerless day affected me. I can hardly describe my feeling more than to say that throughout the long, bleak afternoon, as I sat at work in the lodge, I was harassed by a strange presentiment as of something impending.

I had looked forward to a few days of solitude, but the loneliness of the place was intolerable in the half darkness and that continuous, blowing rain. By mid-afternoon I was in such a state that I blew out the smelly little lamp which had lighted my work in the dim apartment and resigned myself to idleness. I stood at one of the windows gazing out upon the dismal scene. Through the thin, driven rain, the lake looked hazy and there was the odd effect of the water moving toward me. It was not like the surf on a seashore, ever lapping and receding, but a sort of straining of the whole body of water under the impetus of the wind. There occurred to me the whimsical fancy that if the water should succeed in its effort the bed of the lake would be laid bare and I would see, perchance, the object which had enmeshed and held for so many days the body of poor Roland McClintick. I think I never saw a more gloomy sight than Weir Lake on that dreary, haunting afternoon.