an open-wick
lamp move about on the floor level with their own. In the fitful,
smoke-enshrouded glow of that lamp he would catch fleeting glimpses of
clumsy figures and spooklike faces bending over huge round objects,
while at the same time, if the windows were open, he would hear much
mysterious tapping and knocking. It was all very puzzling and not quite
pleasant, so that on midwinter afternoons, when he was still awake after
dark, he would not care to look very long at the house opposite, and
the drawing of the shades came as an actual relief.

Letting his glance drop straight down from one of their windows, he saw,
at a dizzying depth, the cobbles of the lane, lined on either side by a
gutter made out of huge smooth stones. There was often water in the
gutter even on dry days, when the intense blueness of the sky-strip
overhead showed that the sun must be shining brightly. Sometimes the
water was thick and beautifully coloured, and then he yearned to get
down and put his hands into it. But to do so, he gathered from his
mother, would not only be dangerous and contrary to her will and wish,
but quite out of the question for some other reason that he could not
grasp. His mother's standing expression for it was:

"No _nice_ little boy would ever do that."

Keith's third realization in the way of self-consciousness was an uneasy
doubt of his own inherent nicety, for he soon discovered that whatever
was thus particularly forbidden seemed to himself particularly
desirable.

At times he saw children playing down there--perhaps in the very gutter
for which he was longing. To him they appeared entirely like himself,
but to his mother's eye they were evidently objectionable in the same
way as the gutter. There were not many of them, however, and it was a
long time before two or three of them began to return with sufficient
regularity to assume a distinct identity in his mind.

Older people came and went, but never many of them, and hardly ever more
than one or two at a time. Nor did he care very much. More attractive
was the sight of long, horse-drawn carts with narrow bodies resting on
two small wheels set about the centre. Generally they stopped in front
of the distillery to load or unload heavy casks or barrels of varying
size. The loading was more exciting by far, especially when the barrels
were large, for then the men had to use all their strength to roll them
up the gangway of two loose beams laid from the paveme