But Mr. Meredith had said that he hoped his session would be well represented , and Mr. Pryor had evidently taken the request to heart . He wore his best black suit and white tie , his thick , tight , iron-grey curls were neatly arranged , and his broad , red round face looked , as Susan most uncharitably thought , more `` sanctimonious '' than ever . `` The minute I saw that man coming into the Church , looking like that , I felt that mischief was brewing , Mrs. Dr. dear , '' she said afterwards . `` What form it would take I could not tell , but I knew from face of him that he had come there for no good . '' The prayer-meeting opened conventionally and continued quietly . Mr. Meredith spoke first with his usual eloquence and feeling . Mr. Arnold followed with an address which even Miss Cornelia had to confess was irreproachable in taste and subject-matter . And then Mr. Arnold asked Mr. Pryor to lead in prayer . Miss Cornelia had always averred that Mr. Arnold had no gumption . Miss Cornelia was not apt to err on the side of charity in her judgment of Methodist ministers , but in this case she did not greatly overshoot the mark . The Rev. Mr. Arnold certainly did not have much of that desirable , indefinable quality known as gumption , or he would never have asked Whiskers-on-the-moon to lead in prayer at a khaki prayer-meeting . He thought he was returning the compliment to Mr. Meredith , who , at the conclusion of his address , had asked a Methodist deacon to lead . Some people expected Mr. Pryor to refuse grumpily -- and that would have made enough scandal . But Mr. Pryor bounded briskly to his feet , unctuously said , `` Let us pray , '' and forthwith prayed . In a sonorous voice which penetrated to every corner of the crowded building Mr. Pryor poured forth a flood of fluent words , and was well on in his prayer before his dazed and horrified audience awakened to the fact that they were listening to a pacifist appeal of the rankest sort . Mr. Pryor had at least the courage of his convictions ; or perhaps , as people afterwards said , he thought he was safe in a church and that it was an excellent chance to air certain opinions he dared not voice elsewhere , for fear of being mobbed . He prayed that the unholy war might cease -- that the deluded armies being driven to slaughter on the Western front might have their eyes opened to their iniquity and repent while yet there was time -- that the poor young men present in khaki , who had been hounded into a path of murder and militarism , should yet be rescued -- Mr. Pryor had got this far without let or hindrance ; and so paralysed were his hearers , and so deeply imbued with their born-and-bred conviction that no disturbance must ever be made in a church , no matter what the provocation , that it seemed likely that he would continue unchecked to the end . But one man at least in that audience was not hampered by inherited or acquired reverence for the sacred edifice . Norman Douglas was , as Susan had often vowed crisply , nothing more or less than a `` pagan . '' But he was a rampantly patriotic pagan , and when the significance of what Mr. Pryor was saying fully dawned on him , Norman Douglas suddenly went berserk .
With a positive roar he bounded to his feet XXXXX his side pew , facing the audience , and shouted in tones of thunder : `` Stop -- stop -- STOP that abominable prayer !
as at by for in on than that to with