All day long Holon Chan prayed to his father Itzamna in the semi-obscurity of the holy place, leaving his orisons only long enough to replenish the brazier with little balls of incense or quench his thirst from a bowl of water by the door. He had now fasted so long that he was light-headed, and it seemed to him that at times the wooden image of the god smiled down upon him, even answered his prayers for guidance and gave him counsel; at least so he told his uncle when the latter came to fetch him for the investiture an hour before sunset. But this one was a wise old man, well acquainted with the frailty of the flesh and the hallucinations born of an empty stomach, and he only nodded wisely, and did not press for further particulars.