masters and prefects, such rows as fall inevitably to the lot
of all, be they sinners or saints, he pursued an even course and found
in life a quite tolerable combination of boredom and excitement. His
main interest consisted now, as before, in discoveries.

Religion is always a field for engrossing, if unprofitable,
exploration. Until the time arrived for his confirmation Martin had
adopted the average position of his kind. He had taken everything for
granted, but his acceptance had implied neither strength of faith nor
the application of faith to the phenomena of workaday existence.
During chapel he had chanted the psalms and sung the hymns when the
music or his own mood encouraged him to do so. Hymns like 'Fight the
good fight,' which offered an opportunity for a good, throat-bursting
yell, he had always enjoyed: his young emotions had at times been
touched by the more sentimental tunes and he found 'For all Thy saints'
peculiarly affecting. He was not so impassive as the average Elfreyan
who could easily forget the sermons of the Reverend Frank Adair, the
one master who had the courage to let himself go when he preached and
the ability to gain his effect. Adair could grip Martin and make him
feel a very weak vessel. Foskett delivered an address from time to
time, exhortations, as a rule, on the duties of a gentleman and the
traditions of school life. As he never dealt with concrete instances
or dabbled, as did one or two preachers, in thrilling casuistry of the
study or the cricket field, no one paid much attention to his
high-pitched voice and rapt expression. During the repetition of
prayers Martin's thoughts wandered to secular subjects, prep, and
games, and So-and-so's chances of a cap: and he knew, as he gazed at
the long rows of kneeling figures, that nineteen out of twenty minds
were engaged upon the same topics.

Most boys took confirmation very much as a matter of form, as something
you had done to you at some time or another. Perhaps they prayed a
little longer at night, for it was the custom to say prayers, and the
traditional shoe, had it been flung, would more probably have been
aimed at the shirker than the devotee. But otherwise they were
unaffected. Martin took a deeper interest because he had listened
closely to an address in which there had been almost a definite promise
that the first Communion would bring a gift, a spiritual reality about
which no mistake could be made. He was curi