consumption of the bean."

Burton sprang to his feet.

"A thousand thanks, professor!" he cried. "That is the one thing we
were seeking to discover. The leaves, of course!"

Mr. Cowper looked at his visitor in amazement.

"My young friend," he said, "are you going to tell me that you have seen
one of these beans?"

"Not only that but I have eaten one," Burton announced,--"in fact I
have eaten two."

Mr. Cowper was greatly excited.

"Where are they?" he exclaimed. "Show me one! Where is the tree? How
did the man come to write this? Where did he write it? Let me look at
one of the beans!"

Burton produced the little silver snuff-box in which he carried them.
With his left hand he kept the professor away.

"Mr. Cowper," he said, "I cannot let you touch them or handle them.
They mean more to me than I can tell you, yet there they are. Look at
them. And let me tell you this. That old superstition you have spoken
of has truth in it. These beans are indeed a spiritual food. They
alter character. They have the most amazing effect upon a man's moral
system."

"Young man," Mr. Cowper insisted, "I must eat one."

Burton shook his head.

"Mr. Cowper," he said, "there are reasons why I find it very hard to
deny you anything, but as regards those three beans, you will neither
eat one nor even hold it in your hand. Sit down and I will tell you a
story which sounds as though it might have happened a thousand years
ago. It happened within the last three months. Listen."

Burton told his story with absolute sincerity. The professor listened
with intense interest. It was perhaps strange that, extraordinary
though it was, he never for one moment seemed to doubt the truth of what
he heard. When Burton had finished, he rose to his feet in a state of
great excitement.

"This is indeed wonderful," he declared. "It is more wonderful, even,
than you can know of. The legend of the perfect food appears in the
manuscripts of many centuries. It antedates literature by generations.
There is a tomb in the interior of Japan, sacred to a saint who for
seventy years worked for the production of this very bean. That, let me
tell you, was three thousand years ago. My young friend, you have
indeed been favored!"

"Let me understand this thing," Burton said, anxiously. "Those pages
say that if one eats a green leaf after the bean, the change wrought in
one will become absolutely permanent?"

"That is so," the professor assented. "Now a