The prayer over, Holon Chan left the sanctuary and, nodding to its aged guardian in the outer corridor, he prepared to descend the pyramid. The swift twilight of the tropics had already dissolved into night. Above, the stars blazed forth in the cloudless sky; below, the darkness was picked out here and there with little glowing points of red, the cooking fires of his people, who were busily preparing for the great ceremony of his investiture, now but three days distant.