without, the night was cold and wet, but in the small parlor of lakesnam villa the blinds were drawn and the fire burned brightly. what is one piece of information you can infer about the story from this sentence?

The opening line of the story succinctly fulfills one of the greatest necessities for a story that impinges upon the macabre or horrific: it creates a setting and mood perfectly appropriate for the strange tale that is about to come. A story like “The Monkey’s Paw” could certainly have been effective at the time of original publication if the mood were set with a description of a bright, sunny, cloudless day, but that would not retain quite the same power to invoke in the reader a deep expectation of doom.