Occasionally the stamp-mill stopped, its thunder ceasing abruptly.

Then one could hear the noises that the mountains made in their living.

From the canyon, from the crowding crests, from the whole immense landscape, there rose a steady and prolonged sound, coming from all sides at once.

It was that incessant and muffled roar which disengages itself from all vast bodies, from oceans, from cities, from forests, from sleeping armies, and which is like the breathing of an infinitely great monster, alive, palpitating.
McTeague returned to his work.

At six in the morning his shift was taken off, and he went out of the mine and back to the bunk house.