Nor was he long in obeying the command. Taking the wonderful ring along with him he hurried away to the office he had so lately left, and told the miraculous tale to the man of prosecutions. And what although that astute personage smiled at the story, just as if he would have said, if he had thought it worth his while, “Was there any opportunity for Mary Mochrie handling the cod?”--it was only the small whipcord of scepticism applied to the posteriors of the rhinoceros of superstition, even that instinct in poor man to be eternally looking up into the blank sky for special providences. So Mr Warrender, now himself a holy instrument, got what he wanted--an order to the jailer for Mary’s liberation. So away he went; and as he went to the Tolbooth he told every acquaintance he met the exciting story--among others his own clergyman of the Greyfriars, who held up his hands and said, “Wonderful are the ways of God! Yea, this very thing hath a purpose in it, even that of utterly demolishing that arch sceptic David Hume’s soul-destroying Essay on Miracles. I will verily take up the subject the next Sabbath.” And thus, dropping the germs as he went, which formed a revolving radius line from the centre of the mystery--his own house--the consequence was that the miracle of the cod went like wildfire wherever there was the fuel of a predisposing superstition; and where, we repeat, was that not then? where is not now, despite of David with all his genius--the first and best of the anti-Positivists, because he was a true Pyrrhonean. Having got to the jail, Mr Warrender informed Mary of this wonderful turn of providence in her favour, whereat Mary, as a matter of course, held up her hands in great wonder and admiration.