Across the lane, not more than twenty-five feet distant, was another
building, the upper parts of which he could see even when the windows
were closed. It was much darker of aspect than their own house, and he
knew that no people lived in it. He called it the distillery, just as he
heard his parents do, without knowing what the word meant. Staring as he
might into its dark windows, he could as a rule see nothing but the
grimy panes, because in the back of it there was no courtyard at
all--nothing but a solid wall without a single opening in it.

Now and then however, he would spy the flickering light of 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: