“Best in the world,” said Mr. Ferrell. “I hear the old man don’t like it, though. Says he can’t live up to autymobeels and champagne, and he’s goin’ back to live in the woods.”
“They’ve come into money, have they?” Lockwood inquired.
“Yes, sir. I dunno how much. Nobody does. I don’t reckon they know themselves, nor cares, so long’s it lasts. Anyhow, they say they didn’t git half, nor a quarter of what was comin’ to ’em by rights.”
“They was livin’ ’way up the river in the swamps, an’ never heerd on it,” drawled another lounger. “Might have died without knowin’ nothin’ ’bout it, ef it hadn’t been for that smart lawyer down in Mobile.”
“Some says Hanna had something to do with it,” said Ferrell.
“What’s the story?” Lockwood ventured to ask openly.
“Why, this here property—the old Burwell plantation—used to be one of the big estates here one time, before the war,” said the postmaster. “There was the house; you’ll see it when you go by to the camp, and maybe a thousand acres with it. Most of it was timbered, though, and pine wasn’t worth nothin’ in them days; but there was two or three hundred acres of good light land, and some bottom land, and they used to run fifteen or twenty plows, and raise right smart lot of cotton, I reckon.
“But then the whole Burwell family died out, all in one generation, you might say. Some kind of a third cousin got it, and he hadn’t no kin, and died without marryin’. There wasn’t no heirs then nowhere. A good few people put in some claim, I guess, but they couldn’t make good; and the whole place laid idle, and most of the plantation growed up with blackberries and dogwood. So, of course, the State took it at last.
“Most of the timberland was sold then. Charley Craig, the turpentine man, bought some of it, and leased some more to turpentine it. Gradually the State land agents sold most all of it off in bits, all but the house and about a hundred acres of sandy land that wasn’t no good for anything. They rented that to a fellow from Monroe County, and he tried to farm it. I reckon he never got rich on it, but the Powers sure ought to be thankful to him for keeping the brush cut off.
“Then this smart lawyer in Mobile got wind of it and started to dig up an heir. He figured that the Burwells must surely have some sort of kinsfolk somewhere, and sure enough he located old Henry Power, three years ago.