! "Everything will be right now," the
people said, "Ma is back." And once more she became the sovereign lady
of Okoyong.

The next three years were the loneliest and worst she ever spent in the
forest. She was never once down in Calabar, few white persons came to
see her, and she had a big battle to fight with ill-health. There was
not a day that she did not suffer weakness and pain: for whole nights
she never slept, for months she was low with fever, and at times she
believed she was going to die. Think what it must have been for her to
lie there alone, tended only by her black girls. But she was never in
the dumps. Somehow her spirit always managed to conquer her body, and
she would struggle up and with a droll smile and a stout heart go on
with her work. Nobody knew all she did in those years, for the story is
hidden behind a veil of silence; only now and again we get a glimpse of
her, lit up for a moment, as by a flash of lightning, and she is always
bravely fighting for Jesus and the right, now hurrying to rescue twins
and orphans, now sallying out to some village to put down the drinking,
now travelling far to save life.

[Illustration: MA MENDING THE ROOF ON SUNDAY.]

When she was not doing these things she was busy about her own doors.
She had now a new house with a room underneath, and here she taught the
day-school and held services and Bible classes and preached on Sundays.
And there were always the Court and the palavers and the dispensary and
the building and repairing and cooking and digging and a hundred and one
other duties. So absorbed, indeed, did she get in what she was doing
that often, as in the early days at home, she lost count of time.
Sometimes she did not know what day of the week it was. Sundays had a
habit of getting mixed up with other days. Once she was found holding
her services on a Monday thinking it was Sunday, and again on a Sunday
she was discovered on the roof hammering away in the belief that it was
Monday.

She ruled with a firm but kindly hand. The hard and terrible times she
had come through had changed her a little. She had still the old
sweetness, but she could be stern, and even rough, with the people, and
she often spoke to them in a way which a white man would not have dared
to do. Those who were brought up to Court for harming women she punished
severely. If any chief challenged what she said, she would take off the
slipper she had put on as part of her simple Court dre