Ogil. Well then, Cool, let me have a peaceable and easy conversation with you for the time we ride together, and give me some information concerning the affairs of the other world, for no man inclines to lose his time in conversing with the dead, without hearing or learning something useful.
Cool. Well, sir, I will satisfy you as far as I think proper and convenient. Let me know what information you want.
Ogil. May I then ask you, if you be in a state of happiness or not?
Cool. There are a great many things I can answer that the living are ignorant of; there are a great many things that, notwithstanding the additional knowledge I have acquired since my death, I cannot answer; and there are a great many questions you may start, of which the last is one that I will not answer.
Ogil. Then I know how to manage our conversation; whatever I inquire of you, I see you can easily shift me; to that I might profit more by conversing with myself.
Cool. You may try.
Ogil. Well, then, what sort of a body is that you appear in; and what sort of a horse is that you ride upon, which appears to be so full of mettle?
Cool. You may depend upon it, it is not the same body that I was witness to your marriage in, nor in which I died, for that is in the grave rotting; but it is such a body as serves me in a moment, for I can fly as fleet with it as my soul can do without it; so that I can go to Dumfries, and return again, before you can ride twice the length of your horse; nay, if I have a mind to go to London, or Jerusalem, or to the moon, if you please, I can perform all these journeys equally soon, for it costs me nothing but a thought or wish: for this body is as fleet as your thought, for in the moment of time you can turn your thoughts on Rome, I can go there in person; and as for my horse, he is much like myself, for he is Andrew Johnston, my tenant, who died forty-eight hours before me.
Ogil. So it seems when Andrew Johnston inclines to ride, you must serve him in the quality of a horse, as he does you now.
Cool. You are mistaken.