He had done the thing that was contrary to gladness; he was a destroyer! He was not the Curdie he had been meant to be! Then the underground waters gushed from the boy's heart.

And with the tears came the remembrance that a white pigeon, just before the princess went away with her father, came from somewhere--yes, from the grandmother's lamp, and flew round the king and Irene and himself, and then flew away: this might be that very pigeon! Horrible to think! And if it wasn't, yet it was a white pigeon, the same as this.

And if she kept a great Many pigeons--and white ones, as Irene had told him, then whose pigeon could he have killed but the grand old princess's?
Suddenly everything round about him seemed against him.

The red sunset stung him; the rocks frowned at him; the sweet wind that had been laving his face as he walked up the hill dropped--as if he wasn't fit to be kissed any more.

Was the whole world going to cast him out?
Would he have to stand there forever, not knowing what to do, with the dead pigeon in his hand?
Things looked bad indeed.