e cried.

"What can I do? I am only one poor old woman!"

Then she prayed that more missionaries might hear these calls, and come
out from Scotland to help. Sometimes another kind of cry came down the
Creek. A messenger from Arochuku arrived.

"Ma, the bad chiefs are going to thrust the teachers out of the land."

Ma was startled.

"And what did the teachers say?" she asked.

"That the chiefs could put them out of the land, but they could not put
them away from God."

"Good, and what do the people say?"

"That they will die for Jesus."

"Why, that is good news!" Ma exclaimed with delight. "Go and tell them
to be patient and strong, and all will be well."

As there were no missionaries to come up and help her, she went on
alone, this time into the great dark forest-land that stretched far to
the west of Itu. It was the home of the Ibibios, that naked down-trodden
race who had been so long the victims of slave-hunters, "untamed,
unwashed, unlovely savages," Ma called them; but it was just because
they were so wretched that she pitied them and longed to uplift them.
Like Jesus, she wanted to go amongst the worst people rather than
amongst the best.

The Government were now making a road through the forest, and as she
looked at it stretching away so straight and level and broad, she began
to dream again. "I will go with the road," she said, "and build a row of
schools and churches right across the land." She had troops of friends
amongst the white officers, who all admired and liked her, and they,
also, urged her to come, and one said she should get a bicycle.

"Me on a bicycle!" she said. "An old woman like me!"

She had watched their bicycles going up and down the road, and was
afraid of them. She said she would not go near them in case they should
explode; but one of the officers brought her out a beautiful machine
from England, and that cured her. She soon learned to ride, and it
became a great help in her work.

[Illustration]

One day she took Etim, another of her bright scholars, who was only
twelve, and set out for a village called Ikotobong, six miles beyond
Itu, in a beautiful spot amongst the hills, and started a school and
congregation. Etim was the schoolmaster! And right bravely the little
fellow wrought; very soon he had a hundred children deep in the first
book.

The head-teacher at Ikotobong, one of those who learned to love Jesus
through her, thus tells the story of her coming: