It was possible to reason now. She had turned from the road to the right. The Lakeside Hotel was to the left of the road, and, therefore, she had but to skirt the shore of the lake, traveling to leftward, and she must reach her destination. She arose, composed herself, and, womanlike, arranged her hat and hair. Then, keeping close to the water for fear she might again become bewildered and so lose this sure guide, she started again toward her objective. As she turned a jutting point of land she saw, a quarter of a mile distant, the not numerous lights which indicated the presence of Bangs’s ill-reputed hostelry. This sure realization of the nearness of danger awakened caution. It awakened, too, a sense of her futility. Now that she was where something must be done, what was there possible for her to do? What did she mean to do?... She could not answer, but, being an opportunist, she told herself that events should mold her actions; that some course would open before her when need for it became imminent. Small things she noted--inconsequential things. The lake had fallen during the dry weather. She noted that. It had receded to leave at its edge a ribbon of mud, sometimes two feet, sometimes six feet wide.... This was one of those inconsequential, extraneous facts which appear so sharply and demand attention when the mind is otherwise vitally occupied.... She noted the thick-growing pickerel grass growing straight and slender and thrusting its spears upward through the scarcely agitated water. It was lovely in the moonlight.... She noted the paths upon the water, paths which began without reason and wound off to no destination.... Her eyes were busy, strangely busy, photographically occupied. No detail of that nocturne but would be printed indelibly upon the retina of her brain so long as she should live.... Details, details, details! Then she stopped! Her hand flew to her breast with sudden gesture and clutched the bosom of her waist. She started back, trembling.... Was that a log lying half upon the muddy ribbon, half submerged in the receded waters of the lake? She hoped it was a log, but there was something--_something_ which arrested her, compelled her.... If it were a log it was such a log as she never had seen before.... It had not a look of hard solidity, but rather of awful limpness, of softness. It sprawled grotesquely. It was still, frightfully still.... She gathered her courage to approach; stood upon the grassy shelf above this shape which might have been a log but seemed not to be a log, and bent to peer downward upon it.... She thought she screamed, but she did not. No sound issued from her throat, although her lips opened.... She fell back, covering her face.... The log was no log; it was no twisted, grotesque drift wood.... It was the body of a man, the limbs of a man fearfully extended....