five in the evening
The house McTeague had once lived in was still there , occupied by one of the shift bosses and his family . The dentist passed it on his way to and from the mine . He himself slept in the bunk house with some thirty others of his shift . At half-past five in the evening the cook at the boarding-house sounded a prolonged alarm upon a crowbar bent in the form of a triangle , that hung upon the porch of the boarding-house . McTeague rose and dressed , and with his shift had supper . Their lunch-pails were distributed to them . Then he made his way to the tunnel mouth , climbed into a car in the waiting ore train , and was hauled into the mine .