Thus adjured, Ricardo fetched a tumbler of water from the adjoining room and emptied half the contents into Hannah’s mouth. She did not seem to resist the action. Her mouth was like a carved piece of marble. The fluid filled it, but did not attempt to pass down the throat. As the operation was finished, she closed her lips again with a sigh. “Well, that’s a strong test,” remarked Steinberg. “If any voice speaks now, it certainly cannot be that of the medium.” “O! you think that, do you?” almost immediately exclaimed the Voice, which they now called “James”, “well, then, who am I?” “That is just what we are trying to find out, James,” replied Ricardo. “You are certainly not a mortal. Are you the spirit of a dead person, or an emissary of the Devil? Tell us the truth.” “I am certainly not an emissary of the Devil, who never existed except in your own bad thoughts,” replied James. “When people do wrong, they say they were tempted of the Devil. That’s only an excuse for not confessing that they tempted themselves. But I’ve never seen the Devil, nor seen anybody who has seen him, so I can’t tell you anything about that. And I am not the spirit of a dead person, for the good reason that there are no dead persons. Everybody is alive for evermore, and the only ‘dead ’uns’ are the poor bigotted ignorant fools who are content to believe any fable that is told them, and never to find out the truth for themselves.” “Then you must not call us ‘dead ’uns,’ James, for we are only too anxious to find out everything about the next World, and are ready to believe all that you can teach us!” “That’s all very fine, but it’s not my mission to teach you, even if I could! But I’ve had no opportunities yet of learning even as much as you have. You’re educated gentlemen, as can read books for yourselves, but I was only a poor costermonger, as could neither read nor write whilst on earth, and had to begin at A.B.C. when I came over here.” “You speak better than most costermongers,” observed Steinberg. “Of course I do! Didn’t I say I had everything to learn when I came to this world. If you took a costermonger in hand and taught him how to speak, he’d take after your pronunciation, wouldn’t he? That’s what I did. It was a gentleman bred that taught me. I guess he hadn’t done as much as he might for his fellow-creatures when he was here, so they put him on to my little job.” “And why have you come to us then, James?” “Didn’t I tell you the other night, that I _hadn’t_ come for you. I came with this medium. I’ve been attached to her for several years past.” “Did you know her on earth?” “No! I passed over years before she was born.” “Why did you attach yourself to her then?”