ll that you have to do, is
to eat a green leaf from the little tree. After that, you will have no
more need of those three beans, and you can therefore give them to me."

Burton made no attempt to produce his little silver box.

"First of all," he said, "I must test the truth of this. I cannot run
any risks. I must go and eat a leaf. If in three months no change has
taken place in me, I will lend you a bean to examine. I can do no more
than that. Until this matter is absolutely settled, they are worth more
than life itself to me."

Mr. Cowper seemed annoyed.

"Surely," he protested, "you are not going to ask me to wait three
months until I can examine one of these?"

"Three months will soon pass," Burton replied. "Until that time is up,
I could not part with them."

"But you can't imagine," the professor pleaded, "how marvelously
interesting this is to me. Remember that I have spent all my life
digging about among the archives and the literature and the
superstitions of these pre-Egyptian peoples. You are the first man in
the world, outside a little circle of fellow-workers, to speak to me of
this perfect food. Your story as to how it came into your hands is the
most amazing romance I have ever heard. It confirms many of my
theories. It is wonderful. Do you realize what has happened? You,
sir, you in your insignificant person," the professor continued, shaking
his finger at his visitor, "have tasted the result of thousands of years
of unceasing study. Wise men in their cells, before Athens was built,
before the Pyramids were conceived, were thinking out this matter in
strange parts of Egypt, in forgotten parts of Syria and Asia. For
generations their dream has been looked upon as a thing elusive as the
philosopher's stone, the transmutation of metals--any of these unsolved
problems. For five hundred years--since the days of a Russian scientist
who lived on the Black Sea, but whose name, for the moment, I have
forgotten--the whole subject has lain dead. It is indeed true that the
fairy tales of one generation become the science of the next. Our own
learned men have been blind. The whole chain of reasoning is so clear.
Every article of human food contains its separate particles, affecting
the moral as well as the physical system. Why should it have been
deemed necromancy to endeavor to combine these parts, to evolve by
careful elimination and change the perfect food? In the house, young
man, which you have told me