I must say for him he picked it up gently--perhaps it was the beginning of his repentance.

But when he had the white thing in his hands its whiteness stained with another red than that of the sunset flood in which it had been revelling--ah God! who knows the joy of a bird, the ecstasy of a creature that has neither storehouse nor barn!--when he held it, I say, in his victorious hands, the winged thing looked up in his face--and with such eyes!--asking what was the matter, and where the red sun had gone, and the clouds, and the wind of its flight.

Then they closed, but to open again presently, with the same questions in them.
And as they closed and opened, their look was fixed on his.

It did not once flutter or try to get away; it only throbbed and bled and looked at him.

Curdie's heart began to grow very large in his bosom.