The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 96: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ANOTHER PLOT ae fronts were made to slide up and down, but that they were fastened by small brass padlocks, one of which was fixed on the top of every case. She tried the padlock above the case in which the cobra lay, and as if Satan himself had purposely lent his aid to further her foul design, the padlock yielded to her hand. The keeper had either omitted to lock it, or else had so slovenly done his work as not to see that the semicircular bolt had not been thrust in far enough to meet the lock itself. But whichever it were, the padlock was now removed by Sagoonah’s hand, and again did her eyes flash forth the fire of triumph. Once more she sped to the entrance of thc snake-house and swept her looks around. Still the coast was altogether clear, and she retraced her way toward the deadly cobra’s den. Then from beneath the folds of her garments she drew forth a small bag of the thickest and strongest leather, — a bag that was about large enough to contain a fowl or small rabbit. She had so skilfully arranged a piece of whipcord to pass along the top or opening, that it could be closed and drawn tight in the twinkling of an eye, just as a lady’s reticule is made to shut. This bag she opened to a suitable width, and placed it in readiness to receive the reptile. Then without the slightest fear— without even so much as the faintest sensation of a curdling of the blood — she lifted the glass with her left hand, having her right in readiness to use at the moment that should seem advisable. The reptile appeared to watch for a few instants the ascending glass, as if it were something to which it was totally unaccustomed, for be it well understood that the glasses of those cases were never raised while the reptiles were in them, and only when they had been driven or lifted into an adjoining empty case by a stout wire passed through a small hole at the top. Thus the cobra now seemed to follow with its cold, vibrating eyes the ascending glass, as if it were something that struck it with a vague terror; then it closed its hood, turned its head around, and began to glide to the back part of the case. Not more quickly could the reptile itself have darted at Sagoonah than was her right hand thrust into the case, and ere her eye could wink she had clutched the serpent by the neck, but so close to its head that it could not possibly turn its mouth sufficiently so as to touch her finger even with its tongue. Its tail was instantaneously coiled round Sagoonah’s EOMINGIOOKS (CO)