one o'clock
It was the day that he went down to the eight-hundred-foot level that it began . He well remembered it . Up to the left of the stamp-mill , not far from the main office , was a square , red-painted building , up whose steps , just as the bell in the brick store 's tower struck the set time , a procession of clean-faced miners went in and a procession of grimy ones came out . It was at the one o'clock shift that Job went in that day , watched the men hang their coats on what seemed to him an endless line of pegs , take their stand one by one on the little platform which stood in the center of the floor like a trap-door , grasp the iron-bar above them , and at the tinkling of a bell vanish suddenly down into darkness out of sight . It was the first time Job had been down the mine . The sight of the constantly-disappearing figures on the cage that came and went did not encourage him to go , but soon it was his turn . One of the men he knew grasped one side of the bar of the trapeze over him , one the other , the bell tinkled , and down he dropped with a jump that almost took his breath ; down past long , subterranean tunnels of arched rock , which , from the heat he felt from them , and the blinding glare of the lights , seemed to him like the furnaces of Vulcan .