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 pavement to the cart, and to time their efforts they shouted or chanted noisily—­much to Keith’s joy and the disgust of his mother.  On such occasions the air of the lane was apt to take on a special pungency, and as he sniffed it, he would have a sensation of mixed pleasure and revulsion.  At other times when the carts stopped in front of the warehouse below the distillery, odours of an exclusively enjoyable character would tickle his nostrils—­odours that later he might encounter in their own kitchen and identify with matters pleasing to the palate as well as to the nose.

There were in all only eight houses on both sides of the lane.  Four of these were the rear parts of the corner houses facing respectively on the Quay, at the foot of the lane and on East Long Street, at its head.  Beyond the latter there was nothing but another wall full of windows, just like the walls flanking the lane itself.  The traffic on the street was more lively and varied, but there was not much about it to catch and hold his interest.

Almost invariably Keith turned his head in the other direction the moment he had poked it out of the window and been pulled back by his mother to a position of greater safety.  There, at the foot of the lane, only a stone’s throw distant, opened the stony expanse of the quay across which surged a veritable multitude of men and animals and vehicles at all hours of the day.  At the end of the Quay, silhouetted against blue or grey or green water, appeared commonly the blunt nose or the flag-draped stern of a big steamer, but hardly ever the middle part of a hull with bridge or masts.  And Keith could never recall whether the complete shape of a full-sized vessel was finally revealed to him by reality or by that reflection of it which, at an uncannily premature age, he began to find in books.

The main feature of the view, however—­a sort of narrow Japanese panel where childish eyes perceived everything as on a flat surface—­was that it continued upwards:  first, a lot of water, ripped and curled by busily scurrying steam launches and tugs, streaked by plodding rowboats, and, at rare times, adorned by a white-sailed yacht; then, still higher up, a shore with many trees that drew the soul magnetically by their summer verdure; and, finally, a brightly red, toylike fort, crowned by a small embattled tower flying the blue and yellow Swedish flag at the top.  Here was another world, indeed, larger and brighter by far, and more richly varied, than that of his home and the lane below and the dingy courtyard in the back.