Doctor Colfax rose abruptly, as if he could bear no more, and when, with a little more leave-taking, St. Quentin had offered to drive Mrs. Winchester back to Sherman's in his new motor-car, and the Howards and Carolina were left alone, Mr. Howard turned to Carolina and said:
"Carol, I have heard a great deal, here and there, about your interest in Guildford and your wish to restore the place. Would you mind telling me your plans?"
"Not in the least, Mr. Howard. The place has been sold under its mortgage, as you doubtless know, but it is of no more value to its present owner than any of the land surrounding it, which is equally arable. Its only value to us was because it was our ancestral estate. It has a water-front, and, having been left intact for over two hundred years, its timber is enormously valuable. If I owned it, and had a little working capital, I could pay off the mortgage and restore the house with the timber alone."
"Why, how is that, Carolina? Is it so extensive as all that?"
"It is only about two thousand acres,--a mere handful of land to a Northern millionaire, who buys land along the Hudson and in the Catskills and Adirondacks of ten times that amount, but that is a very decent size for a Southern plantation. But the value is in the kind of timber. It is long-leaf yellow pine, which produces turpentine and rosin first, by the orchard process, then what is left is suitable for the lumber men, and the fallen trees and stumps for the new process of making turpentine. My plan was to sell the turpentine rights to the orchard people for, say, three years, then sell the timber, and afterward sell the stumpage and refuse to the patent people, or perhaps erect a plant myself. There is a tremendous profit in turpentine and a constant and ready market."
Mr. Howard sat in a large armchair, with his finger-tips together and his head bent forward, looking at the girl from under his heavy eyebrows. He was amazed at her statement of Guildford's possibilities. Hitherto he had regarded her unknown plan as probably only a woman's sentimental idea, and doubtless wild and impracticable.
"You say that the timber has been untouched for two hundred years?"
"Practically untouched. We had it examined four years ago, and I have heard of nothing since."
"Is any of this land suitable for cotton?"
"Yes, for both cotton and rice, and I should raise both. There is no reason to my mind why a Southerner should not be as thrifty with every acre of ground as the Northerner is, nor why every inch should not be made to yield in America as it does in France."