build
her a better house."

[Illustration: MA'S TINY COMPASS.]

And they began to erect a large one with upstairs rooms and a verandah,
but they could not manage the woodwork. Ma begged the Mission
authorities to send up a carpenter to put in the doors and windows, and
by and by one came from Scotland, named Mr. Ovens, and appeared at
Ekenge with his tools and Tom, a native apprentice, and set to work. Mr.
Ovens was bright and cheery, and had a laugh that made everybody else
want to laugh; and he made so light of the hard life he had to live that
Ma praised God for sending him. Like herself, he spoke the dear Scots
tongue, and at night he sang the plaintive songs of their native land
until she was ready to echo the words of Tom, "Master, I don't like
these songs, they make my heart big and my eyes water."

[Illustration: JUDGE SLESSOR IN COURT.]

CHAPTER IV

Stories of how Ma kept an armed mob at bay and saved the lives
of a number of men and women; how in answer to a secret warning
she tramped a long distance in the dark to stop a war; how she
slept by a camp-fire in the heart of the forest, and how she
became a British Consul and ruled Okoyong like a Queen.

A low wailing cry, with a note of terror in it, drifted out of the
forest into the sunshine of the clearing where Ma was sitting watching
the work on the new house. She leapt to her feet, and listened with a
far-away look on her face. Next moment she sprang in amongst the trees
and disappeared.

Mr. Ovens saw that the natives about him were uneasy, and when a
messenger came running up and said, "You have to go to Ma and take
medicine for an accident," they burst into loud lamentations. On
reaching the spot he found that Etim, the son of the chief, a lad about
twenty years of age, had been caught by a log which he had been
handling, and struck senseless to the ground.

"This is not good for us," Ma said, shaking her head. "The people
believe that accidents are caused by witchcraft, the witch-doctor will
be called in to smell out the guilty ones, and many will suffer."

They carried the lad home, and she nursed him day and night, but life
ebbed away; and one Sunday morning when all was quiet and beautiful, she
heard again that strange wailing sound which told of peril and death.
She rushed to the scene. The men were blowing smoke from a lighted palm
leaf into the lad's nose, rubbing pepper into his eyes, and shouting
into his