Page:Sagas from the Far East; or, Kalmouk and Mongolian traditionary tales.djvu/83

Rh 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, and a large Baling; 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