n he made his bed in
the middle of the church the young men of the village came, as was their
custom, and slept on the floor round him as a guard of honour, and got
water and food for him in the morning.

Ma was as busy as a bee. She carried on a day-school, preached to four
hundred people, taught a Bible Class and a Sunday School, received
visitors from dawn till dusk, and explored the forest and made friends
with the shy natives. Every now and then she canoed up the Creek as far
as Arochuku, and stayed in the villages along the banks. Mud-and-thatch
churches began to spring up. Onoyom, however, said he was not going to
be satisfied with anything less than the very best House of God, and
taking three hundred pounds that he had saved up, he spent it all on a
fine building. When the time came to make the pulpit and seats, he said:
"We want wood, cut down the juju tree." Now the juju tree is where the
god of a village is supposed to live, and his men were horror-struck.

"The juju will be angry; he will not let us, he will kill us."

"Ma's God is stronger than our juju," was his reply. "Cut it down."

They went out and began the work, but the trunk was thick, and after a
time they stopped.

"See, we cannot cut it."

The heathen crowd, standing in a ring watching them, were overjoyed.
"Ah, ha!" they cried, "our juju is stronger than Ma's God."

Next morning Onoyom took out a party of men who wanted to be disciples
of the new faith, and before beginning to hack at the tree they knelt
down and prayed that the White Mother's God would prove more powerful
than the juju. Then, rising, they attacked it with lusty strokes, and
soon it tottered and fell with a mighty crash. It was the turn of Onoyom
to rejoice.

[Illustration: THE JUJU TREE.]

When the Creek churches were ready, missionaries travelled up from
Calabar to open them, and were astonished to see the happy, well-clothed
people, and the big sums of money they brought. At one place there was a
huge pile of brass rods, the value of which was L20. You must remember
that these were still heathen people, but they were longing to love and
serve the true God. So eager, indeed, were they that they worried Ma
until she was almost distracted. Messages came every day like this: "We
want to know God: send us even a boy." "We want a White Ma like you to
teach us book and washing and sewing." "We have money to pay a teacher,
send one." Sometimes she laughed, and sometimes sh