“How is this thing possible?” he said in his astonishment, and made a movement as if to go near it.
“Hold on!” cried the man, stopping him. “You would just make a lot of other footprints around it and spoil it all.”
He added in an irritated tone, “There must be some explanation for it. A solitary footprint is absurd. Suppose he had jumped from here into the middle of the field. That would account for the absence of other footprints. But who could have jumped so far and land on one foot only? He would have lost his balance; he would have had to have leant on the other leg; I imagine he would have had to have run a little, as one does when jumping off a tram when it is going. But here there is no trace of the other foot!”
“It is utterly absurd,” said Boura, “for, had he jumped from here, he would have left traces on this road, and you see the only tracks here are yours and mine. No one has been here before us. The imprint of the heel is turned towards the road. The man who left it must have been going in that direction; had he been going to the village, he would have turned to the right. On this side there are only fields, and what the devil should any one be looking for in the fields at a time like this?”
“Excuse me, but he who placed his foot there must have left again some way or other. I maintain that since there are no other footsteps he cannot have left at all. It is logical. No one has gone by here. One must seek for some other explanation of the imprint.”
Boura was exercising his thinking powers.
“There may have been a natural hollow in the earth or in the frozen mud, which the snow has covered. Or . . . wait a moment! There may have been an old shoe abandoned there which a bird has taken away since the snow began to fall. In that case there would be a spot, in the shape of a single footprint, where there was no snow. One must seek a natural explanation.”
“Had the shoe been there before the snowfall, it would be a black spot, but I see snow in it.”
“Perhaps the bird took away the shoe while it was still snowing or let it fall in its flight and picked it up again.
