Meanwhile Mrs Warrender had been very busy with the mute person of our drama--the cod--in which, like the devil in the story who had bargained for a sinner and having got a saint instead, had half resolved to follow the advice of Burns and “take a thought and mend,” she had got so much more than she bargained for with the fishwife that she was, when Mr Warrender and Isabella entered, ready to faint. They found her sitting in a chair scarcely able to move, under no less an agency than the fear of God. Her breath came and went with difficulty through lips with that degree of paleness which lips have a special tendency to take on, an expression of awe was over her face, and in her hand she held that identical ruby ring for the supposed theft of which the unfortunate Mary had been hurried to jail, and as for being able to speak she was as mute as the flounder in the proverb that never spoke but once; all she could do was to hold up the ring and point to the cod upon the dresser. But all in vain, for Mr Warrender could not see through the terrible mystery, nay, surely the most wonderful thing that had ever happened in this lower world since the time when the whale cast up Jonah just where and when he was wanted, till at length Mrs Warrender was enabled to utter a few broken words to the effect that the ring had been found in the stomach of the fish. Then, to be sure, all was plain enough--the cod was a chosen instrument in the hands of the great Author of Justice sent by a special message to save Mary Mochrie from the ruin which awaited her under a false charge. The conviction was easy in proportion to the charm which supernaturalism always holds over man-- “True miracles are more believed The more they cannot be conceived;” and we are to remember that the last witch had not been burnt at the time of our story. But what made this Divine interposition the more serious to the house of the Warrenders, the message from above was sent as direct as a letter by post, only not prepaid, for Mrs Warrender had paid for the fish; and so it was equally plain that a duty was thus put upon Mr Warrender of no ordinary kind.