A novella from 1873, set in the USA. A man goes missing. Some of his things are found in a lime-kiln. Has the body been destroyed in the quicklime?

The plot is based on a true story: the trial of Jesse and Stephen Boorne in Manchester, Vermont, as explained in an endnote by Collins.

The missing body theme suggests parallels with Dickens’s ‘The Mystery of Edwin Drood’ (1870)