ten in the morning
It was on a Tuesday morning that Cracked McGregor died . His death fixed itself as something fine in the mind of the boy and the scene and the circumstance stayed with him through life , filling him with secret pride like a knowledge of good blood . `` It means something that I am the son of such a man , '' he thought . It was past ten in the morning when the cry of `` Fire in the mine '' ran up the hill to the houses of the miners . A panic seized the women . In their minds they saw the men hurrying down old cuts , crouching in hidden corridors , pursued by death . Cracked McGregor , one of the night shift , slept in his house .