Gradually Keith learned to know the old house from top to bottom. The
garret and the cellar remained of excitement for a long time. The rest
of it offered little to hold the attention or feed the imagination.

It covered three sides of a rectangle, with the courtyard in the centre.
The wall of the adjoining house; formed the fourth side--a sheer cliff
of plastered brick that towered two whole stories higher, its dreary
expanse unbroken by a single window. Along the foot of it ran a long low
structure with innumerable doors opening on the courtyard. Thither men,
women and children had to descend regardless of weather or hour or
season, and every visitor could be watched from the windows opening
on the yard.

The rear part of the house constituted practically a building by
itself, with a stairway of its own, and the people living there seemed
to form a world apart, with which Keith never became very well
acquainted. But on the ground-floor of that part was the laundry, used
in turn by every household in the entire house and regarded by the boy
as a far-off, adventurous place until he had been allowed to visit it a
couple of times.

The building facing the lane and that running along the courtyard had a
stairway in common at the corner where they joined. Its stairs and
landings were of stone, uncarpeted, and lighted in the day by a window
on each floor and at night by a single gas jet on each landing. At the
foot of the lowermost flight of stairs was a long and dark passage that
turned at a right angle and finally reached the lane after what seemed a
long walk. Branching to the right, at the foot of the stairs, was
another passage from which the cellar was reached after you had used all
your strength to push open a huge iron door that squeaked uncannily on