lood 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 in his side pew, facing the audience, and shouted in tones
of thunder:

"Stop--stop--STOP that abominable prayer! What an abominable prayer!"

Every head in the church flew up. A boy in khaki at the back gave a
faint cheer. Mr. Meredith raised a deprecating hand, but Norman was
past caring for anything like that. Eluding his wife's restraining
grasp, he gave one mad spring over the front of the pew and caught the
unfortunate Whiskers-on-the-moon by his coat collar. Mr. Pryor had not
"stopped" when so bidden, but he stopped now, perforce, for Norman, his
long red beard literally bristling with fury, was shaking him until his
bones fairly rattled, and punctuating his shakes with a lurid
assortment of abusive epithets.

"You blatant beast!"--shake--"You malignant carrion"--shake--"You
pig-headed varmint!"--shake--"you putrid pup"--shake--"you pestilential
parasite"--shake--"you--Hunnish scum"--shake--"you indecent
reptile--you--you--" Norman choked for a moment. Everybody believed
that the next thin