{"id":"01KG6GMN3Q8ZX446NBHYQT1TJM","cid":"bafkreiguz2js43jnmfnihfol3ljemjc2xstaxebvxunbwuon27v4g27rxm","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":7815,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T03:55:03.883Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 4","source_file":"01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR","start_line":7735,"text":"an eye supernatural with unrelated misery.\r\n\r\n‘Nay,’ faltered I, ‘I mistook you. Go on; I want nothing.’\r\n\r\nLeading my horse close to the door from which she had come, I knocked.\r\nAnother pale, blue girl appeared, shivering in the doorway as, to\r\nprevent the blast, she jealously held the door ajar.\r\n\r\n‘Nay, I mistake again. In God’s name shut the door. But hold, is there\r\nno man about?’\r\n\r\nThat moment a dark-complexioned, well-wrapped personage passed, making\r\nfor the factory door, and spying him coming, the girl rapidly closed the\r\nother one.\r\n\r\n‘Is there no horse-shed here, sir?’\r\n\r\n‘Yonder, the wood-shed,’ he replied, and disappeared inside the factory.\r\n\r\nWith much ado I managed to wedge in horse and pung between the scattered\r\npiles of wood all sawn and split. Then, blanketing my horse, and piling\r\nmy buffalo on the blanket’s top, and tucking in its edges well around\r\nthe breast-band and breeching, so that the wind might not strip him\r\nbare, I tied him fast, and ran lamely for the factory door, stiff with\r\nfrost, and cumbered with my driver’s dreadnaught.\r\n\r\nImmediately I found myself standing in a spacious place, intolerably\r\nlighted by long rows of windows, focusing inward the snowy scene\r\nwithout.\r\n\r\nAt rows of blank-looking counters sat rows of blank-looking girls, with\r\nblank, white folders in their blank hands, all blankly folding blank\r\npaper.\r\n\r\nIn one corner stood some huge frame of ponderous iron, with a vertical\r\nthing like a piston periodically rising and falling upon a heavy wooden\r\nblock. Before it--its tame minister--stood a tall girl, feeding the iron\r\nanimal with half-quires of rose-hued note-paper, which, at every\r\ndownward dab of the piston-like machine, received in the corner the\r\nimpress of a wreath of roses. I looked from the rosy paper to the pallid\r\ncheek, but said nothing.\r\n\r\nSeated before a long apparatus, strung with long, slender strings like\r\nany harp, another girl was feeding it with foolscap sheets, which, so\r\nsoon as they curiously travelled from her on the cords, were withdrawn\r\nat the opposite end of the machine by a second girl. They came to the\r\nfirst girl blank; they went to the second girl ruled.\r\n\r\nI looked upon the first girl’s brow, and saw it was young and fair; I\r\nlooked upon the second girl’s brow, and saw it was ruled and wrinkled.\r\nThen, as I still looked, the two--for some small variety to the\r\nmonotony--changed places; and where had stood the young, fair brow, now\r\nstood the ruled and wrinkled one.\r\n\r\nPerched high upon a narrow platform, and still higher upon a high stool\r\ncrowning it, sat another figure serving some other iron animal; while\r\nbelow the platform sat her mate in some sort of reciprocal attendance.\r\n\r\nNot a syllable was breathed. Nothing was heard but the low, steady,\r\noverruling hum of the iron animals. The human voice was banished from\r\nthe spot. Machinery--that vaunted slave of humanity--here stood menially\r\nserved by human beings, who served mutely and cringingly as the slave\r\nserves the Sultan. The girls did not so much seem accessory wheels to\r\nthe general machinery as mere cogs to the wheels.\r\n\r\nAll this scene around me was instantaneously taken in at one sweeping\r\nglance--even before I had proceeded to unwind the heavy fur tippet from\r\naround my neck. But as soon as this fell from me the dark-complexioned\r\nman, standing close by, raised a sudden cry, and seizing my arm, dragged\r\nme out into the open air, and without pausing for a word instantly\r\ncaught up some congealed snow and began rubbing both my cheeks.\r\n\r\n‘Two white spots like the whites of your eyes,’ he said; ‘man, your\r\ncheeks are frozen.’\r\n\r\n‘That may well be,’ muttered I; ‘’tis some wonder the frost of the\r\nDevil’s Dungeon strikes in no deeper. Rub away.’\r\n\r\nSoon a horrible, tearing pain caught at my reviving cheeks. Two gaunt\r\nblood-hounds, one on each side, seemed mumbling them. I seemed Actaeon.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 4"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG6GKYHXFMHC1JHVXJAQ6BXT","peer_type":"section","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG2T49K0H5GDRB0G4YDTPG8H","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG6GMN3QTWN2W59S0WV4ZK60","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG6GMN3QXNSWB0RMK98YA9J7","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T03:55:06.743Z","ts":"2026-01-30T03:55:18.995Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}