“Now what a sinful question that is!”

“But is there?”

“Don’t he bring you things?”

“Oh, there ain’t any!” There was a sullen desperation in this, as of one done with quibbles.  But the woman still paltered wretchedly.

“Well, if you don’t lie down and go to sleep quicker’n a wink I bet you anything he won’t bring you a single play-pretty.”

There came an unmistakable blare of triumph into the busy snore on the cot.

But the heart of the skeptic was sunk.  This evasion was more disillusioning than downright confession.  A moment the little boy regarded her, wholly in sorrow, with big eyes that blinked alarmingly.  Then came his last shot; the final bullet which the besieged warrior will sometimes reserve for his own destruction.  There could no longer be any pretense between them.  Bravely he faced her.

“Now—­you just needn’t try to keep it from me any longer!  I know there ain’t any—­” One tensely tragic second he paused to gather himself—­“It’s all over town!” There being nothing further to live for, he delivered himself to grief—­to be tortured and destroyed.

Clytie set the candle on the bureau and came to hover him.  Within the pressing arms and upon the proffered bosom he wept out one of those griefs that may not be told—­that only the heart can understand.  Yet, when the first passion of it was spent she began to reassure him, begging him not to be misled by idle gossip; to take not even her own testimony, but to wait and see what he would see.  At last he listened and was a little soothed.  It appeared that Santa Claus was one you might believe in or might not.  Even Clytie seemed to be puzzled about him.  He could see that she overflowed with belief in him, yet he could not make her confess it in plain straight words.  The meat of it was that good children found things on Christmas morning which must have been left by some one—­if not by Santa Claus, then by whom?  Did the little boy believe, for example, that Milo Barrus did it?  He was the village atheist, and so bad a man that he loved to spell God with a little g.

He mused upon this while his tears dried, finding it plausible.  Of course it couldn’t be Milo Barrus, so it must be Santa Claus.  Was Clytie certain some presents would be there in the morning?  If he went directly to sleep, she was.

Hereupon the larger boy on the cot, who had for some moments listened in forgetful silence, became again virtuously asleep in a public manner.

But the littler boy must yet have talk.  Could the bells of Santa Claus be heard when he came?

Clytie had known some children, of exceptional merit, it was true, who claimed to have heard his bells on certain nights when they had gone early to sleep.

Why would he never leave anything for a child that got up out of bed and caught him at it?  Suppose one had to get up for a drink.