When Thomas Perkins found out that Bud had really gone he was plunged in deepest grief. He came over to where John Watson was ploughing stubble, the very picture of self-pity. "Pretty hard on a man, John, pretty hard," he began as soon as he came within hearing distance, "to lose his only boy and have to hire help; after losin' the twins, too, the year of the frozen wheat--fine little fellows they was, too, supple as a string of suckers. And now, by golly, Bud's gone, John, with the good new eighteen-dollar suit--that's what I paid for it in cold cash in Brandon last winter--and I'll have to keep my hired man on if he don't come back, and this beggar I have, he can eat like a flock of grasshoppers--he just chunks the butter on his bread and makes syrup of his tea. Oh, yes, John, it's rough on a man when he begins to go down the other side of the hill and the bastin' threads are showin' in his hair. It's pretty hard to have to do with hired help. I understand now better'n ever why Billy Winter was cryin' so hard when his third wife died. Billy was whoopin' it up somethin' awful when Mr. Grantley went out to bury the woman, and Mr. Grantley said somethin' to comfort Billy about her bein' in a better place--that was a dead sure bet, anyway--but Billy went right on bawlin'--he didn't seem to take no notice of this better place idea--and after a while he says right out, says he: 'She could do more work than three hired girls, and she was the savin'est one I've had yet.'" "Bud'll come back," said John Watson, soothingly. "The poor lad is feeling hurt about it--he don't like to have people thinkin' hard of him." "Wasn't ten dollars a ter'ble fine, John, only eighteen?" Mr. Perkins said. "It isn't the money I'm thinkin' of, it's feelin's; poor Bud, and him as honest a lad as ever drew breath." John Watson had a shrewd suspicion of who had "plugged" the grain.