For the house next door was as dark as dark.

Then suddenly we heard a sound--it came from the gate at the end of the garden.

All the gardens have gates; they lead into a kind of lane that runs behind them.

It is a sort of back way, very convenient when you don't want to say exactly where you are going.

We heard the gate at the end of the next garden click, and Dicky nudged Alice so that she would have fallen out of the tree if it had not been for Oswald's extraordinary presence of mind.