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.
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