I am most grateful--deeply grateful to you--for having brought me this manuscript." Mr.Cowper was busy for the next quarter of an hour.

His expression, as he turned up dictionaries and made notes, was still full of the liveliest and most intense interest.

Presently he leaned back in his chair.

He kept one hand upon the loose sheets of manuscript, while with the other he removed his spectacles.

Then he closed his eyes for a moment.
"My young friend," he said, "did you ever hear a quaint Asiatic legend--scarcely a legend, perhaps, but a superstition--that many and many a wise man, four thousand years ago, spent his nights and his days, not as our more modern scientists of a few hundred years ago have done, in the attempt to turn baser metals into gold, but in the attempt to constitute from simple elements the perfect food for man ?" Burton shook his head.