on began to show
through the mist about 3 A. M., and they jumped and pushed off,
and then for eight hours pulled and sang and laughed and shouted
in their high spirits, wakening the echoes of dreadful-looking
places, where mud and ooze hold the crocodile and other
creatures.

It was the same coming back, and when they all arrived at Use they broke
a little hole in the doorway and crept in and threw themselves down on
bed and floor until morning. They were often soaked, and Ma sometimes
was so tired and ill and racked with pain that she could not leave the
canoe, but slept in it all night. "However can you do it?" she was
asked. "Oh," she replied cheerily, "I just take a big dose of medicine
and wrap myself in a blanket and manage fine."

Once when she got back to Use she found that a tornado had damaged the
house, and she began to repair it with her own hands. The hard work was
too much for her, and she took to her bed and became delirious. Yet she
struggled up and went over to the church and sat in a chair and
preached.

A young missionary, Dr. Hitchcock, had come out to take charge of the
medical station at Itu for a time. He had heard of Ma and of her
masterful ways, but he was strong too, and not afraid of her, and when
he saw her so ill he took her in charge and ordered her firmly to do
what he bade her, just as if she had been a child. Poor Ma! She was a
child in strength then, and she obeyed him meekly, and he treated her
like a mother and she loved him as a son, and under his kind and
watchful care she gradually got better. "But you mustn't cycle any
more," he said, "you are past that now." So some friends in Scotland
sent her out a basket-chair on wheels which the boys and girls pushed,
and in this she continued to make her journeys into the forest.

[Illustration: THE CHURCH AT IKPE.]

A special joy in these lonely days was the love of many girls and boys
at home. She told one that she had always a few choice packets of
letters lying beside her chair and bed, and took them up as one would
take up a book, and read them over and over again. Many were from her
little friends. They told her about their schools, their games, their
holidays, their pets, and their books--the letters of one boy, she said,
were always like a sardine tin, they were so packed full of news--and
she sent long replies back, wonderful replies, full of fun and stories
and nonsense and good sense.

One of the mother