ened
to their stories and advised and comforted them. When they quarrelled
they said, "Let us go to Ma," and she heard both sides and told them who
was wrong and who was right, and they always went away content.

She needed no longer to go to any of the villages round about when a
chief died. She just sent a message that there must be no killing. There
was a great uproar, but back always came the reply, "We have heard. Our
mother has made up her mind. We will obey." They did not know that Ma
all the time was in her room kneeling and praying to God.

Some mourned over the old ways. "Ah, Ma," they sighed, "you have spoilt
all our good fashions. We used to take our people with us when we went
to the spirit land; now we must go alone."

But she had still to be on the alert, for many of the tribes at a
distance from Ekenge had not yet given up their dark practices, and
whenever they were bent on anything wicked they plunged deep into the
heart of the forest to escape her eyes.

One day she heard that a chief had died, and was guided to one of these
hidden spots, where she found his free men giving the poison ordeal to a
number of prisoners. They thought she would grow tired and go away if
they simply sat and waited, but days and nights passed and she remained
with them, sleeping on the ground beside a fire. Of the armed men lying
around her she was not afraid, but only of the wild beasts that might
come creeping up through the darkness and leap upon her. It was not she
who became wearied and hungry, but the men themselves, and by and by the
prisoners were set free.

Eme Ete helped her most. It was she who told her when wrong-doing was
being plotted. In the swift way that only natives know about, Eme Ete
received news of it. Calling a trusty messenger she gave him a special
kind of bottle.

"Take that to Ma and ask her to fill it with ibok (medicine)--go
quick!"

When the messenger arrived at the Mission House and Ma saw the bottle,
she knew what it meant. It said to her, "Be ready!" and she would not
undress until she heard the cry, "Run, Ma, run!" Once she lay down to
rest in her clothes for a whole month before word came, and then she
saved the life of a man.

Sometimes a quarrel arose so quickly, and the call was so sudden, that
she was not ready to go, and so she took a large sheet of paper and
wrote anything on it that came to her mind, and after splashing some
sealing-wax on it to make it look important, she