The tapping below

An original fiction passage set in the nineteenth century.

Dusk had gathered over the quarry when Elias drew the gate shut. From the lower cutting came a sound so faint that it might have been a pebble falling. He waited, but Mr Preece called from the office that the hill was merely settling. Then he asked whether Elias had grown fond of ghost stories. Elias almost laughed. He pictured the fire in his cottage, his dry stockings and Anna keeping his supper warm.

The sound came again: three knocks, an interval, then two.

Stones do not keep time, Elias thought.

Mr Preece said every worker’s name had been crossed from the list. “Then there can be nobody below,” Elias replied, although his hand had closed around the gate key.

He took the road home. At the first bend, the tapping reached him once more, patient as a hand upon a door. Elias stopped. A moment later, his boots were striking the road in the opposite direction. He passed Mr Preece without speaking and came from the tool shed with a rope and lamp. By the time the owner called after him, the lamp was already swinging over the quarry’s black edge.

Analyse how language and structure are used to present Elias’s changing response to the sounds from the quarry. Support your answer with references to the passage.