He and Bob had learnt very early that the Nation of the Insane comprised diverse classes, sects, and parties, each of which must be treated with in a different way. A matched pair of starving ragamuffins, roving around a camp in the middle of some ducal game-park, exerted a powerful draw on maniacs of many types. But for those boys to survive, they had to learn to distinguish between, say, the religious Phanatiques and the pædophiles. For the consequences of being caught by them were wholly different. A Phanatique might even take it upon himself to defend a couple of boys from the sort of mad Vagabond who was bent on buggery. For this service he might exact a price, namely, to make them hear a sermon. It was in his nature to give sermons, just as it was to lambaste sodomites. As these two behaviors expressed the same nature, they could not be teased apart. The boys had to accept one with the other. From such sermons had the Shaftoe boys learned everything there was to know about the Anglican Church.