The Footprints in the Snow

the long version

Written during the Edwardian period, these seventeen stories, fables and parables were composed for the entertainment and instruction of its author's pupils at Eton college. Each uses supernatural and fantastic elements to illuminate their author's Christian belief in the endurance of light and morality in even the darkest of places and situations. The author was a friend of M. R. James and a classmate, at Eton and Cambridge, of A. C. Benson, who supplies a lengthy biographical memoir. This collection was published posthumously from typed manuscripts found among the author's papers after he died from a hiking accident in the Swiss Alps. A similar accident is the setting for the title story.