Who is that blind man who strikes a cow’s horn with a bit of wood as he walks along? Kok, kok, kok, goes the horn. It is the fortune-teller, upon whose words the fate of so many people depends. There--a woman has stopped him. The sound of the horn is stilled. He leans his head to one side, listening, while his poor, empty eyes stare vacantly. Now he is speaking. You cannot hear his words, for he has lowered his voice. Probably he is telling the old lady her fortune, or advising her about a new daughter-in-law, or some business matter. On we go. There, at a corner of that temple under the shadow of the red brick wall, sits a learned-looking man with wide-rimmed spectacles. He has a table in front of him, on which there are two small cages. Wait a moment and you will see something of interest. Up come some people from the country. You can tell that they are villagers by their new clothes and the circles of silver pins which the girls have stuck in their hair, beside their general look of being on holiday. One of them wishes to have her fortune told. See! the old gentleman has put some slips of folded paper, about the size of playing-cards, upon the table. There are different fortunes written on them. If you looked closely enough at the edge of the folded papers you would see that one of them has a little double fold. But this is a secret of which these country folk know nothing. Now which of the fortunes will be chosen? Wait and you will see. Old Spectacles opens the door of one of the cages and out hops the most friendly speckled brown bird. He stands in front of the folded papers and looks at them, one after the other, in the wisest way; he turns his head, down dives his clean, black bill. See, he has picked up one of the papers. His master takes the paper and gives birdie a grain of rice before putting him back in his cage. Now he reads off the fortune from the paper and explains its meaning. The country folk are much impressed, especially by the wise bird, and pay their money willingly before they go away. They are so superstitious that they really believe the bird chose their fortune for them, but birdie only picked out the paper with a fold in the edge, because he hoped to find a grain of corn in the crease. If you followed its master home, you would see him constantly teaching his little brown pet to choose the paper with a fold, by putting a grain of rice just inside the crease. So when customers come to have their fortunes told, the bird looks over the papers until it finds the one folded at the edge by the fortune-teller, and then picks it up and gives it to be read by him.