The Seeker | Page 3

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.
Uneasy enough he looked now as Clytie unloaded him of the bundles
and bulky toys. In a silence broken only by their breathing they quickly
bestowed the gifts--some in the hanging stockings at the fire-place,
others beside each bed, in chairs or on the mantel.
Then they were in the hall again, the door closed so that they could
speak. The old man took up his own candle from a stand against the
wall.
"The little one is like her," he said.
"He's awful cunning and bright, but Allan is the handsomest. Never in
my born days did I see so beautiful a boy."
"But he's like the father, line for line." There was a sudden savage
roughness in the voice, a sterner set to the shaven upper lip and straight
mouth, though he still spoke low. "Like the huckstering, godless
fiddle-player that took her away from me. What a mercy of God's he'll
never see her again--she with the saved and he--what a reckoning for
him when he goes!"
"But he was not bad to let you take them."
"He boasted to me that he'd not have done it, except that she begged

him with her last breath to promise it. He said the words with great
maudlin tears raining down his face, when my own eyes were dry!"
"How good if you can leave them both in the church, preaching the
word where you preached it so many years!"
"I misdoubt the father's blood in them--at least, in the older. But it's late.
Good night, Clytie--a good Christmas to you."
"More to you, Mr. Delcher! Good night!"
CHAPTER II
AN OLD MAN FACES TWO WAYS
His candle up, he went softly along the white hallway over the heavy
red carpet, to where a door at the end, half-open, let him into his study.
Here a wood fire at the stage of glowing coals made a searching
warmth. Blowing out his candle, he seated himself at the table where a
shaded lamp cast its glare upon a litter of books and papers. A big,
white-breasted gray cat yawned and stretched itself from the hearthrug
and leaped lightly upon