He beheld a low room having a kind of verandah, roofed with reeds, and beyond it a little courtyard enclosed by a wall of grey-coloured mud bricks, out of some of which stuck pieces of straw.

This courtyard opened onto a narrow street where many oddly-clothed people walked up and down, some of whom wore peaked caps.

A little man, old and grey, sat with the fragment of black rock on a low table before him, which Godfrey knew to be the same stone that he had already seen.

By him lay graving tools, and he was engaged in polishing the stone, now covered with figures and writing, by help of a stick, a piece of rough cloth and oil.

A young man with a curly beard walked into the little courtyard, and to him the old fellow delivered the engraved stone with obeisances, receiving payment in some curious currency.
Then followed picture upon picture in all of which the talisman appeared in the hands of sundry of its owners.