Before he had finished his exclamation, I could see him no more, (because of the way in which I was carried round,) and thus escaped the awful shock of seeing my own dear father fall. And before I could look again in that direction, the briskness of the wind, which was north-west, had taken me so far, that the plane-tree came between, and I could not see the fearful thing that I myself had done. Yet somehow, or other, my mind misgave me, that I had left some harm behind; and my weight grew greater and greater; as I saw no more of father, who ought to have run up the hill to watch me, as people do to a balloon. This made me come down, at the bottom of our yard, when I might have gone over the Regent's Canal. My flights are always cut short by grief; but no other, by such a grief as this. CHAPTER XIX. COMFORT. When I came to know what I had done, through shameful levity, and heedlessness, and selfish triumph and greedy ways--for that crab had much to do with it--also through laziness, and, self-conceit, and the absence of humble gratitude--which would have taught me to fall on my knees, instead of skipping up like a bubble--for many hours I lay and groaned, and was much more likely to sink into the earth, than ever to mount into the air again. My mother, in her first great shock and anguish, had called me a wicked boy, and said that I never ought to have been born; and I could only answer-- "Oh, how much I wish I had never been! But it was more your doing than mine, mother." I believe that I should have gone mad, after seeing the people come with father's coffin, if I had been left in the house, to hear, and think of all that they were doing. For mother was not at all strong-minded, but kept on falling from one condition of heart into the opposite; and sometimes cried by the hour, and sometimes laughed at herself, for the soreness of her eyes. And then it was so clear what father had been, by the way that every one spoke well of him--so gentle, and generous, and kind-hearted, and living entirely for the good of others--that instead of being comforted, I cried more, to think that it was I, who had destroyed all this. Several people took me by the hand, or patted my head, and made me look up at them, all of them seeming to say the same words, so far as I took heed of them--"Don't fret, my boy, don't knock under like that. It can't be helped now. Why, you did not mean to do it; and you must bear it, like a man, you know."