the hour of one
It was thought that on the day preceding the fatality , his visitors having left him , Bannadonna had unpacked the belfry image , adjusted it , and placed it in the retreat provided -- a sort of sentry-box in one corner of the belfry ; in short , throughout the night , and for some part of the ensuing morning , he had been engaged in arranging everything connected with the domino ; the issuing from the sentry-box each sixty minutes ; sliding along a grooved way , like a railway ; advancing to the clock-bell , with uplifted manacles ; striking it at one of the twelve junctions of the four-and-twenty hands ; then wheeling , circling the bell , and retiring to its post , there to bide for another sixty minutes , when the same process was to be repeated ; the bell , by a cunning mechanism , meantime turning on its vertical axis , so as to present , to the descending mace , the clasped hands of the next two figures , when it would strike two , three , and so on , to the end . The musical metal in this time-bell being so managed in the fusion , by some art , perishing with its originator , that each of the clasps of the four-and-twenty hands should give forth its own peculiar resonance when parted . But on the magic metal , the magic and metallic stranger never struck but that one stroke , drove but that one nail , served but that one clasp , by which Bannadonna clung to his ambitious life . For , after winding up the creature in the sentry-box , so that , for the present , skipping the intervening hours , it should not emerge till the hour of one , but should then infallibly emerge , and , after deftly oiling the grooves whereon it was to slide , it was surmised that the mechanician must then have hurried to the bell , to give his final touches to its sculpture . True artist , he here became absorbed ; and absorption still further intensified , it may be , by his striving to abate that strange look of Una ; which , though , before others , he had treated with such unconcern , might not , in secret , have been without its thorn . And so , for the interval , he was oblivious of his creature ; which , not oblivious of him , and true to its creation , and true to its heedful winding up , left its post precisely at the given moment ; along its well-oiled route , slid noiselessly towards its mark ; and , aiming at the hand of Una , to ring one clangorous note , dully smote the intervening brain of Bannadonna , turned backwards to it ; the manacled arms then instantly up-springing to their hovering poise . The falling body clogged the thing 's return ; so there it stood , still impending over Bannadonna , as if whispering some post-mortem terror .