“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 all 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?”