Leaving Mrs Warrender with the cod, which is as indispensable to our legend as a frying-pan to a Dutch interior, or the bone of a pig to a saint’s legend, we follow the prisoner to the office of the man who is a terror to evil-doers. Mr Warrender was there as the private prosecutor, and Isabella as a witness, or rather _the_ witness. On being seated, the fiscal asked Mary, whether, on the day of the bathing, she had not seen the said ring on the finger of her young mistress; whereto Mary answered in the affirmative. Then came the application of the Lydian stone, in the form of the question, whether she did not, at the foresaid time and place, abstract the said ring from the finger of Isabella when she held her hand in the process of dipping; but Mary was here negative and firm, asserting that she did not, and giving emphasis to her denial by adding, that God knew she was as innocent as the foresaid babe. In spite of all which, Isabella insisted that she had been robbed in the manner set forth. The fiscal saw at once that the whole case lay between the two young women, and recommended Mr Warrender to let go the prosecution as one which must fail for defect of evidence; but that gentleman, for the reason that he had so far committed himself, and also for that he was annoyed at what he called the impudence of a servant disputing the word of his daughter, and calling her, in effect, a liar, insisted upon his right, as the protector and curator of his daughter, of having the culprit committed to jail, in the expectation that, through some medium of the three magic balls, or otherwise, he would get more evidence of the crime. The fiscal had no alternative; and so Mary Mochrie was taken to the Tolbooth, with the ordinary result, in the first place, of the news going up and down the long street which then formed the city, that Mrs Warrender’s servant was imprisoned for the strange crime of abstracting from Miss Warrender’s finger, while bathing, the love-token given to her by her intended. There was, doubtless, about the tale just so much of romance that would serve it as wings to carry it wherever gossip was acceptable--and we would like to know where in that city it was not acceptable then, and where it is not acceptable now.