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.

Uneasy enough he looked now as Clytie unloaded him of the bundles and
bulky toys. In a silence b