"I knowed hit! I knowed hit! O good, kind Jesus! O Lord, Saviour! dey ain't no _if!_ Dey ain't no if! My Mos' Grif gwine ter do hit. Dey ain't no if lef in dem han's! My Mos' Grif gwine ter buy John!" and she fell on her knees again and sobbed for joy. She caught the little black baby up from the floor where it lay, laughing and kicking its toes in the air, and crushed it so close to her breast that it cried out and then set up a wail. Sallie stopped weaving her body to and fro, and tried to smile through her tears. "Des listen ter dat fool baby! Hits oryin' fo' des a little hu't like dat, an' I only des choke hit wif my arms! Mos' Grif done choke my hawt out vrid grief, an' now he done strangle me wid joy, befo' I got ter cry, chile! Yoah po' mammy's hawt done bus' wide open wid joy now. Dat's what make I can't talk no sense, Mos' Grif. I des wants ter yell. But Mis' Katherine, she know. I des kin see dat she do. _She_ know dat I feel des like I gwine ter bos' plum' down ter my chist. She know!" She laid the baby down again and suddenly held up both arms toward her master. Her voice was a wail. "Tell me dat dey ain't no _if_ lef in your hawt, Mos' Grif! I knows dat dey ain't, but I got ter heah yo' _say_ dat dey ain't, an' den I kin go!" "I will buy John, Sallie. There is no if," he said; and Katherine threw her arms around his neck and looked at him through tears of joy. That night the Rev. Griffith Davenport prayed long and earnestly that he might be forgiven for this final weakness. He felt that his moral fiber was weakening. He had broken the vow taken so long ago. He felt that the bonds were tightening about him, and that it would be harder than ever to cleanse his soul from what he had grown to feel was an awful wrong--this ownership, and now this money purchase, of a human soul. "I have gone the whole length," he sighed to himself. "I have at last, with my eyes open, with my conscience against me, done this wrong! I have paid money for a human being. I know it is a wrong--I know--I know, and yet I have done it! God help me! God forgive me! I cannot see my way! I cannot see my way!" In the distance, as he arose from his knees, there floated in through the open window the refrain from Sallie's song, as she moved about the quarters:-- An' deys no mo' trouble, an' deys no mo' pain, An' deys no mo' trouble fo' me, fo' me! An' deys no mo' sorrer, an' no mo' pain-- Oh, deys no mo' trouble fo' me, f-o-h-h m-e-e-e! I libs on de banks ob de golden shoah, Oh, I libs in de promise' lan'! An' I sez to de Lawd, when He opens the doah, Dat deys no mo' trouble fo' me! De Lawd He says, when he took my han', "Enter into de gates ob res'!" An' He gib me a harp, an' I jines de ban', Fo' deys no mo' sorrer fer me!