The old hawker picked up the missing spectacles and handed them over. "You wouldn't remember me, in any case," he said. "I last saw you twenty-five years ago, when you were trying to dig at Verria. There was an old man there, do you remember, being beaten by armed Bashi-Bazouks, and you held them up with an empty revolver, and took the old man to your camp and nursed him, and you said things to the Turkish Governor, and . . ." "My excavations came to an untimely end," said the Student. "I always owed that old man a grudge for being beaten before my tent. Why couldn't he have been beaten somewhere else? I should like to meet him again and tell him precisely what I thought of his conduct." "You have done both now," said the hawker. "And it is his turn." "Impossible," said the Student. "He was as old twenty-five years ago as you are now." "At my age," said the old man, "one grows no older. No one who walks the world as I do need ever grow any older. You can walk thirty miles on Monday when you are twenty years old; good. If you can do it on Monday you can do it on Tuesday; and if on Tuesday, then on Wednesday; therefore, by an easy reckoning, you can do it as well at eighty years old as at twenty. Thus you never age." "There's a flaw in that somewhere," said the Student. "I know; it's the Heap. How many grains of sand make a heap?" "How many buttons do you want?" said the hawker. "You saved my life once; you shall have all the buttons you want for nothing." "I thought you couldn't answer my question," said the Student. "But we are getting on much too fast; we haven't really begun yet. I suppose you came here to sell things? Anne seemed to know you, and she said I wanted buttons. I pointed out to her that her statement was either an untruth or a truism, and equally objectionable in either sense; and now you repeat it, just as I was beginning to consider you quite an intelligent person. By the way, who are you?" "I have a different name in most countries which I visit," said the old man. "But by profession I sell buttons--and other things." "What sort of things?" said the Student. "I have dreams," said the old man, "dreams and the matter of dreams; imaginings of the impossible come true; the wonder of the hills at sunrise; the quest of unearthly treasure among the moon-flowers; the look in the eyes of a child that trusts you." The Student took off his spectacles, rubbed his eyes hard, and settled his shoulders. "I desire something very much," he said. "If you can do all that, you can give me what I desire." The hawker frowned.