Because it broke the charm.

But if a very, very good child just happened to wake up while he was in the room, and didn’t pay the least attention to him, or even look sidewise or anything—­

Even this were hazardous, it seemed; though if the child were indeed very good all might not yet be lost.

“Well, won’t you leave the light for me?  The dark gets in my eyes.”

But this was another adverse condition, making everything impossible.  So she chided and reassured him, tucked the covers once more about his neck, and left him, with a final comment on the advantage of sleeping at once.

When the room was dark and Clytie’s footsteps had sounded down the hall, he called softly to his brother; but that wise child was now truly asleep.  So the littler boy lay musing, having resolved to stay awake and solve the mystery once for all.

From wondering what he might receive he came to wondering if he were good.  His last meditation was upon the Sunday-school book his dear mother had helped him read before they took her away with a new little baby that had never amounted to much; before he and Allan came to Grandfather Delcher’s to live—­where there was a great deal to eat.  The name of the book was “Ben Holt.”  He remembered this especially because a text often quoted in the story said “A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches.”  He had often wondered why Ben Holt should be considered an especially good name; and why Ben Holt came to choose it instead of the goldpiece he found and returned to the schoolmaster, before he fell sick and was sent away to the country where the merry haymakers were.  Of course, there were worse names than Ben Holt.  It was surely better than Eygji Watts, whose sanguine parents were said to have named him with the first five letters they drew from a hat containing the alphabet; Ben Holt was assuredly better than Eygji, even had this not been rendered into “Hedge-hog” by careless companions.  His last confusion of ideas was a wondering if Bernal Linford was as good a name as Ben Holt, and why he could not remember having chosen it in preference to a goldpiece.  Back of this, in his fading consciousness was the high-coloured image of a candy cane, too splendid for earth.

Then, far in the night, as it might have seemed to the little boy, came the step of slippered feet.  This time Clytie, satisfying herself that both boys slept, set down her candle and went softly out, leaving the door open.  There came back with her one bearing gifts—­a tall, dark old man, with a face of many deep lines and severe set, who yet somehow shed kindness, as if he held a spirit of light prisoned within his darkness, so that, while only now and then could a visible ray of it escape through the sombre eye or through a sudden winning quality in the harsh voice, it nevertheless radiated from him sensibly at all times, to belie his sternness and puzzle those who feared him.