the hour of eleven
All the charity we possess beyond this may be properly called fleshly charity ' -- he lifted his eyes to see two of his ` back-tenters ' playing behind the frames , and his real Christian charity displayed itself in pulling their ears until they tingled and bled , and in freely using his feet in sundry kicks on their shins . And yet , wherein was this man to blame ? Was he not what commerce and Calvinism had made him ? The finger of the clock in the factory yard was creeping towards the hour of eleven , when a smell , ominous to every old factory hand , was borne into the nostrils of Amos . In a moment his ` Everlasting Task ' was thrust into his shirt-breast , and he ran towards the door from which the stairway of the room descended . No , he was not mistaken , the smell was the smell of fire , and scarcely had he gone down a half-dozen steps before he met a man with blanched face , who barely found breath to say : ` Th ' scutchin ' room 's ablaze . ' Amos carried a cool head .