w
obedience, and of the quiet and happy days they would enjoy long after
she had gone.

"Ma! Ma!" they cried in alarm, "you must not leave us! You are our
Mother, and we are your children. God must not take you from us until we
are able to walk by ourselves."

After that things were better, though Ma's life did not grow less hard.
Indeed, it was more stirring than ever. For various reasons her people
were leaving their huts and building new ones at a place called Akpap,
and Ma had to shut up the Mission and go with them.

The only house she could find to live in was a little shed like a
two-stalled stable, or one of the sheep-houses you see on the Scottish
hills, with a mud floor and no windows. But she did not mind. She always
thought of her Master, who had not a place to lay His head. So she put
her boxes in one end, and in the other she lived and slept with the
children.

It was a grand play-ground for rats, lizards, ants, beetles, and other
jumping and creeping things. At night the rats ran over Ma, and played
hide-and-seek in the roof. Once, when Mr. Ovens arrived to do some
carpentry work, he went to wash himself in the shed. In the dimness he
felt what he thought was a sponge floating in the basin, and saying Ma
was surely getting dainty, he used it for his face, only to find that it
was a drowned rat!

From this lowly hut, as from a palace, Ma continued to rule Okoyong.

Soon a strange disease seized her new lot of babies, and four died from
it. Then smallpox, that dreadful scourge, swept through the land, and so
many of her people were carried off that they lay unburied in their
huts. Ma was busy from dawn till dark, and often from dark again till
dawn, vaccinating the well ones, and nursing the ill and the dying.

To her great grief her old friend, Chief Edem, caught the disease. In
spite of his faults, which, after all, were the faults of his African
upbringing, he had been very good to her, and she was grateful for all
he had done. When she reached his hut at Ekenge there was no one with
him, for as soon as a man or a woman was stricken all others fled. She
fought the disease through long weary hours, but was not able to save
him, and he died in the middle of the night. Tired as she was, and weak
from lack of sleep, and alone, she felt that she could not let him lie
like that. Going out she got some wood and made a coffin. Then in the
darkness she dug a grave and buried him. There was no dancing and