former-which lasted from December to March-because of the "smokes" or
harmattan, a haze composed of fine dust blown from the great African
desert, that withered her up and sucked out all the energy she
possessed. She was frequently attacked by fever, and laid aside, and on
one occasion was at the point of death. But she never lost her
confidence in God. Once she thought she had. It was during an illness
when she was only semi-conscious, but on recovering the clearness of
her mind she realised that she had given herself into His keeping and
need not fear, and a sense of comfort and peace stole over her. So many
attacks weakened her constitution and made her think oftener of home.
She began to have a longing to look again upon loved faces, to have
grey skies overhead, and to feel the tang of the clean cool air on her
cheek, "I want my home and my mother," she confessed. It was home-
sickness, and there is only one cure for that. It comes, however, to
pass. It is not so overpowering after the first home-going, and it
grows less importunate after each visit. One finds after a short
absence that things in the old environment are, somehow, not the same;
that there has ceased to be a niche which one can fill; that one has a
fresh point of view; and as time goes on and the roots of life go
deeper into the soil of the new country, the realisation comes that it
is in the homeland where one is homeless, and in the land of exile
where one is at home. But at first the pull of the old associations is
irresistible; and so when her furlough was due, Mary flew to Scotland
as a wandered bird flies wing-weary back to its nest.

She left Calabar in June 1879 and proceeded straight to Dundee. During
her stay she removed her mother and sisters to Downfield, a village on
the outskirts of the city, and was happy in the knowledge that all was
well with them. Friends who listened to her graphic account of Calabar
tell that even then she spoke of her desire to go up country into the