, and she took nothing with her but a bright face and a
heart full of love and sympathy. She was more like Jesus, who faced His
enemies with nothing but the power of His spirit.

[Illustration: CANOE BEING MADE OUT OF A TREE-TRUNK.]

The paddlers landed her at a strip of beach on the river, and with a
fast-beating heart she trudged along the forest path for about four
miles until she reached a village called Ekenge.

Shouts arose: "Ma has come! Ma has come!" and a crowd rushed forward. To
her surprise they seemed pleased to see her. "You are brave to come
alone," they said; "that is good."

The chief, who was called Edem, was sober, and he would not allow her to
go on farther, because the people at the next village were drunk and
might harm her. So she stayed the night at Ekenge.

"I am not very particular about my bed nowadays," she told a friend,
"but as I lay on a few dirty sticks laid across and across and covered
with a litter of dirty corn-shells, with plenty of rats and insects,
three women and an infant three days old alongside, and over a dozen
goats and sheep and cows and countless dogs outside, you don't wonder
that I slept little! But I had such a comfortable quiet night in my own
heart."

Next day all the big men of the district came to see her, and her
winsome ways won them over, and they agreed to give her ground for a
church and school, and promised that when these were built they would be
places of refuge into which hunted people could fly and be safe.

She was so happy that she did not mind the rain, which came on and
wetted her to the skin as she walked back through the forest to the
river. The tide, too, was against the paddlers, so they had to put the
canoe into a cove and tie it to a tree for two hours. Ma was cold and
shivery, and lay watching the brown crabs fighting in the mud, but she
dared not sleep in case a crocodile or snake might make an attack. The
men kept very quiet, and sometimes she heard them whisper, "Speak softly
and let Ma sleep," or "Don't shake the canoe and wake Ma." When they
started again she gradually passed into sleep, and only wakened to see
the friendly lamps of Creek Town gleaming like stars through the night.

A month or two later she was ready to go and make her home among the
Okoyong. The people of Creek Town were alarmed, and tried to make her
give up the idea.

"Do you think any one will listen to you?"

"Do you think they will lay aside their weapons of