While Jud dragged him, she carried a stick and prodded Bud in the rear. Nor was she chary in abuse. Jerked into the superintendent's presence, Bud's scared eyes darted here and there as if looking for a door to break through, and all the time they were silently protesting. His hands, too, joined in the protest; one of them wagged beseechingly behind appealing to his spouse to desist--the other went through the same motion in front begging Jud Carpenter for mercy. But not a word did he utter--not even a grunt did he make. They halted as quickly as they entered. Bud's eyes sought the ceiling, the window, the floor,--anywhere but straight ahead of him. His wife walked up to the superintendent's desk--she was hot and flushed. Her small black eyes, one of which was cocked cynically, flashed fire, her coarse hair fell across her forehead, or was plastered to her head with perspiration. It was pathetic to look at Bud, with his deep-set, scared eyes. Kingsley had never heard him speak a word, nor had he even been able to catch his eye. But he was the best slubber in the mill--tireless, pain-staking. His place could not be filled. Bud was really a good-natured favorite of Kingsley and when the superintendent saw him, scared and panting, his tongue half out, with Jud Carpenter's hand still in his collar, he motioned to Jud to turn him loose. "Uh--uh--" grunted Jud "--he will bolt sho!" Kingsley noticed that Bud's head was bound with a cloth. "What's the matter, Bud?" he asked kindly. The slubber never spoke, but glanced at his wife, who stood glaring at him. Then she broke out in a thin, drawling, daring, poor-white voice--a ring of impertinence and even a challenge in it: "I'll tell you'uns what's the matter with Bud. Bud Billings is got what most men needs when they begin to raise sand about their vittels for nothin'. I've busted a plate over his head." She struck an attitude before Kingsley which plainly indicated that she might break another one. It was also an attitude which asked: "What are you going to do about it?" Bud nodded emphatically--a nod that spoke more than words. It was a positive, unanimous assertion on his part that the plate had been broken there. "Ne'ow, Mister Kingsley, you know yo'se'f that Bud is mighty slow mouthed--he don't talk much an' I have to do his talkin' fur him. Ne'ow Bud don't intend for to be so mean"--she added a little softer--"but every month about the full of the moon, Bud seems to think somehow that it is about time fur him to make a fool of hisse'f again. He wouldn't say nothin' fur a month--he is quiet as a lam' an' works steady as a clock--then all to once the fool spell 'ud hit him an' then some crockery 'ud have to be wasted.