ss, and slap him
over the bare shoulder with it.

Yet she was never afraid. She went about alone by day and night, and
never carried a weapon. She had no locks on her doors. Once a murderer
was caught and nearly torn to pieces by the mob before he was chained
and brought to Ma to be judged. She heard the evidence, and ordered him
to be sent down to Duke Town for trial. Then she took off his irons, and
sent away the guard, and bade him come into the house, where she sat
down and talked to him earnestly for a long time. He was a big man,
violent and sullen, and he could easily have knocked her down and
escaped into the woods. But he listened quietly, and allowed her to lead
him to the room below, where she fastened him in for the night.

Only once in all the years she spent in Okoyong was she struck, and that
was by accident. There was a quarrel and a fight, and she went into the
press of excited men to stop them. One of the sticks hit her. A cry of
horror arose:

"Ma is hurt! Our Ma is hurt!"

Both sides at once fell on the wretched man who held the stick, and
began to beat him to death.

"Stop, stop!" Ma cried. "He did not mean to do it."

And it was only by using all her strength and forcing them back that she
saved his life.

And so the years wore on, and the new century came. "A new century,"
said Ma, sitting dreaming in her lonely little house. "What will it
hold? It will at least hold His loving kindness and care all the way
through, and that is enough."

For fifteen long patient years Ma gave her life to Okoyong, and she had
her reward, for it became a land of peace and order and good will, the
bad old customs died away, and the people were slowly but surely
becoming the disciples of Jesus.

It was a wonderful thing for a white woman to have done alone, but Ma
would not take any credit for it; she said it was no power of her own
that had won her such a place in the heart of the wild people: it was
the power of Jesus working in her and through her. _He_ was the King of
Okoyong, and she was only His humble servant-maid.

[Illustration: JANIE.]

[Illustration: THE LILY-COVERED ENYONG CREEK.]

CHAPTER VII

Tells of a country of mystery and a clever tribe who were
slave-hunters and cannibals, and how they were fought and
defeated by Government soldiers; how Ma went amongst them,
sailing through fairyland, and how she began to bring them to
the feet of Jesus.

On some quie