The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 394: what you’re looking at

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

THE BANK-NOTES 363 with her mistress’s letters, and stealing through the garden at the back, Barney the Burker glided into the house. The kitchen was unoccupied at the moment; he traversed it, he entered the passage leading to the hall. The parlour door happened to be standing ajar; he peeped in, and beheld Madame Angelique taking a comfortable nap upon the sofa, which was drawn near the table whereon wine. and dessert appeared. There was no lamp in the room, but the light from the window was sufficient to reveal the Frenchwoman’s sleeping form to the Burker’s eyes. He crept softly up the stairs and entered a bedchamber, which, by its appearance, was evidently that of Madame Angelique. There he re- mained for a minute or two, deliberating whether he should ransack the place at once and trust to circumstances to en- able him to beat a retreat, or whether he should hide himself under the bed, and by making his appearance before Madame Angelique in the middle of the night, extort from her terrors a far larger booty than he might perhaps succeed 1n obtaining from his own unassisted researches in the room. The sound of the back door closing, and then the light trip of footsteps ascending thestairs, left the Burker no further discretion in the affair. He comprehended that the pretty servant-maid had returned, and that she was most probably seeking her mis- tress’s chamber to prepare it for the night, so he accordingly slipped at once under the couch. The girl entered, and was for some time busied in the chamber, the Burker being in readiness to spring forth and seize her by the throat if she should by any chance happen to look under the bed. Little suspected the pretty maid that danger was so imminent, and it was perhaps fortunate for her that she did not plunge her eyes into the ruffian’s place of ambush. For upwards of half an hour did the maid servant remain in that chamber, — more, as it would seem, for the purpose of whiling away the time than for the completion of any actual work which she had to do, because this latter might have been compressed into a third of that space. Jane was a lively, happy girl, and sang to herself during the interval she remained there, unconscious as the bird upon the bough that the concealed, coiled-up reptile was in readiness to spring forth. At length she quitted the room, taking the light with her, and the Burker thought to himself that as he had remained there secure so long, it would perhaps be CORnnICLOOOKS (CO)