There was a terrible sensation on the very morning after you left, at the disappearance of Martha Bennett, the daughter of one of your tenants.

She left the house just at dusk the evening before, and has not been heard of since.

As she took nothing with her, it is improbable in the extreme that she can have fled, and there can be little doubt that the poor girl was murdered, possibly by some passing tramps.
However, though the strictest search was made throughout the neighbourhood, her body has never been discovered.
"We lost another neighbour just about the time you left--Percy Carthew.

He went for a year's big game shooting in North America.
We don't miss him much, as he lived in London, and was not often down at his place.

I don't remember his being there since you came back from the Crimea.