Black and I are going to find him. I think I know where to look.
Get me ready, mother dear; we are going to-night."
"You are going to-night?" This was said after the first moment of
ebullition had past. "Where, Reuther? You have not been
corresponding with Oliver. How should you know where to look for
him?"
Then Reuther told her story.
"Mr. Ostrander and I were talking very seriously one day. It was
before we became definitely engaged, and he seemed to feel very
dispirited and uncertain of the future. There was a treatise he
wanted to write, and for this he could get no opportunity in
Detroit. 'I need time,' he said, 'and complete seclusion.' And
then he made this remark: 'If ever life becomes too much for me, I
shall go to one of two places and give myself up to this task.'
'And what are the places?' I asked. 'One is Washington,' he
answered, 'where I can have the run of a great library and the
influence of the most inspiring surroundings in the world; the
other is a little lodge in a mountain top above Lake Placid--
Tempest Lodge, they call it; perhaps, in contrast to the
peacefulness it dominates.' And he described this last place with
so much enthusiasm and weighed so carefully the advantages of the
one spot against the other for the absorbing piece of work that he
contemplated, that I am sure that if we do not find him in
Washington, we certainly shall in the Adirondacks."
"Let us hope that it will be in Washington," replied the lawyer,
with a keen remembrance of the rigours of an Adirondack fall--
rigours of which Reuther in her enthusiasm, if not in her
ignorance, appeared to take little count.
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