and since there seemed no reason anymore to keep the stone buried if all it did was produce increasingly fitful peeks of the sun which resulted in crops and beasts that diminished in number and vitality , they decided to unearth the venerated object and let the old man hold and treasure it which he did , living in the back of the stones old hut , gazing at the ebb and flow of its light with wide , unsleeping eyes , as though fearing that a single moment of carelessness on his part might extinguish its magical glow forever .