But Mr Warrender was not, by this act of justice, yet done with Mary. It behoved him to take her home and restore her to her place, with a character not only cleared of all imputation, but illustrated by the shining light of the favour of Heaven; and so he accompanied her down the thronged High Street,--an act which partook somewhat of the procession of a saint, whereat people stared; nay, many who had heard of the miracle went up and shook hands with one who was the favourite of the Great Disposer of events. Nor did her honours end with this display; for when they reached the house they found it filled with acquaintances, and even strangers, all anxious to see the wonderful fish, and the ring, and the maid. In the midst of all which honours Mary looked as simple as a Madonna; and if she winked it was only with one eye, and the winking was to herself. Even here her honours that day did not terminate, for she behoved for once to dine with the family--not on the cod, which was reserved as something sacred, like the small fishes offered by the Phaselites to their gods--but on a jolly leg of lamb, as a recompense for the breakfast of which she had that morning been deprived. Nay, as for the cod, in place of being eaten, it stood a risk of being pickled, and carried off to help the exchequer of some poor Catholic community in the land of miracles. But probably the most wonderful part of our history consists in this fact, that no one ever hinted at the propriety of having recourse to the easiest and most natural way of solving a knot so easily tied; but we have only to remember another mystery--that of the gullibility of man when under the hunger of superstition. Nor need we say that the maw of a cod, big and omnivorous as it is, never equalled that of the miracle-devourer’s, possessing, as it does, too, the peculiarity of keeping so long that which is accepted. Wherein it resembles the purse of the miser, the click of the spring of which is the sign of perpetual imprisonment. We only hear the subsequent jingle of the coin, and the jingle in our present instance might have lasted for twenty years, during all which time Mary Mochrie’s miracle might have served as the best answer to the Essay of the renowned sceptic.