The sun, bringer of joy, of warmth, healer, comforter,--the sun,
glorious and glowing, was up there. Ambrose did not want to go back, for
all the misery he had known in the world--and that was a great deal--had
come from going back. Clinging by his fingers and the toe of
leather-shod, he dragged wooden-shod and leather-shod with him up the
cliff. But he had made scarcely more than a beginning before it seemed
to him that the sun was gaining on him,--that he was losing the sun.
Dismayed, he gaped upward, his cheek as close as lichen to the cliff.
Soaring at the very peak of the great rock, the sun swam slowly, slowly
out of sight: one fourth, two fourths, three fourths gone and there was
nothing but the great burning eyelash, and then all gone.
To Ambrose, child of the light, it had become suddenly dark--the sun was
gone. With a sob he let go his hold, slipped and tumbled down what he
had scaled, and while his cry was still flapping like a dark wing among
the rocks, lay still.
On the other side, the sun, which was this time surely to have been his,
was sinking down, down, down, in its diurnal course over other cliffs
and rocky hills and above stony fields, meadows and shining streams.
The Sun Chaser’s cry had flapped about on the rocks, and sunk into the
forgotten place of cries, when Ambrose opened his eyes again and gazed
into the darkness above him. He knew what this meant. The sun was gone,
he had lost the sun again. With a cry he staggered to his feet,
stumbled, and then, finding his way out, he plunged down over the stony
fields and through the wet meadows. Clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop,
clippity, clippity-clop, all could hear him come running, and stumbling
along the lamp-lighted streets.
“See his copper hair shine!” said a wife to her husband.
“He runs like something mad,” answered her husband.
“When he came by last night,” said a little girl, fear in her voice, “he
looked in at this window, Mother.”
“He’s looking for something now,” said the mother, “and I suppose that’s
why he lights lamps and chases the sun, although I’m sure nobody knows
what ails Ambrose Clark except that he’s drunk all the time.”
“What do you suppose he is after?” asked a bride who stood by a darkened
window, her lover’s arm about her.
“The Doctor says happiness,” answered the lover.