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 stopped to watch a man sitting cross-legged on the ground, sewing or weaving, or hammering on a piece of metal. He listened to the bright-colored parrots that hung in cages by the doorways and called to the tame monkeys that swung along the railings or dropped down from roof tops. He poked the lazy dogs that slept in the hot dust or snapped at the buzzing flies.

Crowds of people passed him, coming and going in a steady stream. Some were dressed in bright silk, some were dressed in rags, but few of them wore clothes like the garments he knew at home in the Valley. No one noticed Rhamon and he ran about gayly, dodging the noisy little horse carts that rattled their way through the narrow busy streets.

Rhamon had some annas that jingled in his pockets, so he looked at the colored candies in this little shop, the sticky cakes in the next one, and the gay array of penknives in another. "I really need a penknife," he thought, "one with a sharp blade that will cut the hardest root.