Page:Resurrection Rock (1920).pdf/16

 John also married; and their wives preferred the more fashionable resorts of the east for the next summers. So, at the turn of the century, old Lucas and his wife, with their servants, were coming alone to the enormous frame house on the edge of the ruined old mill town above the shores of Lake Huron.

Then, when Lucas' wealth and power and position seemed absolutely safe, the madness for assailing successful men broke out; Lucas, more willful and obstinate with his advancing years, received his share of the assaults; and he met them so characteristically that politicians forgot others in their hue and cry to run him "out." When, the next year, Lucas affairs to his sons and retired to St. Florentin, the politicians boasted that they had won; and Lucas, crafty and practical as always, let them say it, as that seemed to satisfy them and keep them from scrutinizing what his sons were doing.

The real reason for Lucas' retreat from Chicago—as the family and a few others knew—was his break with his brother John. They had always quarreled; but now they ceased to speak, and the same streets could not hold both. So Lucas fitted up his cottage for an around-the-year home and, when he emerged and was interviewed by the press, he expounded upon the completeness of his content in surroundings such as those in which his own hands had toiled. He was still strong and huge and hearty to roam the woods on snowshoes and with a gun under his arm. So his motives were comprehensible enough to his white and bronze-skinned neighbors of the new forest.

The purpose of the builder of the other great house near St. Florentin was far more puzzling. In the first place, the site was not upon the peninsula but upon a