After sunset the Khan’s herds came in from grazing, and the cow-wench, when she had shut them into the stable, swept up the yard without heeding the talisman, which thus got thrown on to a dung-heap. This the man saw, but still bestirred him not to recover it.
The next day there was great stir and noise in the place; the Khan sent out messengers into every district far and near to say that the Khan’s beautiful daughter had lost his talisman, and promising rewards to whoso should restore it.
After this too, he ordered the great trumpet, which was only blown on occasion of promulgating the laws of the kingdom, to be sounded and proclamation to be made, calling on all the wise men and soothsayers of the kingdom to exercise their cunning art, and divine the place where the talisman should lay concealed.
All this the man heard as he lay under the straw, but yet he bestirred him not. Early in the morning, however, men came to litter the place for the kine with fresh straw; and these men, finding him, bid him turn out. Now that it became a necessity to stir himself, he bethought him of the talisman; and when the men asked him whence he was, he answered “I am a soothsayer come to divine the place where lies the Khan’s talisman.”
Hearing that, they told him to come along to the Khan. “But I have no clothes,” replied the man. So they went and told the Khan, saying, “Here is a soothsayer lying in the straw of the stable, who is come to divine where the Khan’s talisman lies hid, but he cannot appear before the Khan because he has no clothes.”
“Take this apparel to him,” said the Khan, “and bring him hither to me.”
When he came before the Khan, the Khan asked him what he required to perform his divination.
“Let there be given me,” answered the man, “a pig’s head, a piece of silk stuff woven of five colours,[5] and a large Baling[6]; these are the things which I require for the divination.”
All these things being given him, he set up the pig’s head on a pedestal of wood, and adorned it with the silk stuff woven of five colours, and put the Baling-cake in its mouth. Then he sat down over against it, as if sunk in earnest contemplation. Then on the day which had been named in the Khan’s proclamation for the day of divination, which was the third day, all the people being assembled, assuming the air of a diviner of dreams, he wrapped himself in a long mantle, and made as though he was questioning the pig’s head. As all the people passed, he seemed to gain the answer from the pig’s head,—
“The talisman is not with this one,” and “The talisman is not with that one,” so that he had many people on his side glad to be thus pronounced free from all charge of harbouring the Khan’s talisman.