re here, is
now to be set forth.

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