“The flies hev got at them honions,” he said, on this Spring afternoon.  “I thought they would, and I reckon they’re done for.  Ever seen a honion-fly, Sir?  A nice, lively, busy-looking thing; pretty reddish-grey coat, with a whitish face, and pale grey wings.  About this time of the year it lays its eggs on the sheath of the onion-leaf, and within a week you’ve got the larvey burrowing down into the bulb; after which, there’s hardly any hope for your honion.”

“Can nothing be done to save them?” SARK asked.  As far me, I was too down-hearted to speak.

“Well,” said ARPACHSHAD, ruefully, not liking the prospect of interfering with beneficent Nature, “if you was to get a bag of soot, wait about till a shower was a coming on, carefully sprinkle the plant, and let the soot wash in, that might save a few here and there.  Or if you were to get a can of paraffin, and syringe them, it would make the fly sit up.  But I don’t know as how it’s worth the trouble.  Nater will have its way, and, if the fly wants the honion, who are we that we should say it nay?  I think, TOBY, M.P., if I was you, I’d let things take their swing.  It’s a terrible thing to go a interfering with Nater.”

But we didn’t follow ARPACHSHAD’S advice.  Having undertaken to run this garden, we were determined to do it thoroughly; so I got SARK to sweep out the flues of the furnace in the greenhouse, in the course of which he broke several panes of glass, not expecting, so he explained, to find the handle of his brush so near the roof.  We half filled a sack with soot, and carried it to the onion-bed.  Then we waited for a wet day, usually plentiful enough in haymaking time, now long deferred.  ARPACHSHAD insisted that we were to make quite sure that rain was coming—­then sprinkle the soot over the unsuspectiong onion.  “We waited just too long, not starting till the rain began to fall.  Found it exceedingly unpleasant handling the soot under conditions of moisture.  But, as SARK said, having put our hands to the soot-bag, we were not going to turn back.  Nor did we till we had completed the task, ARPACHSHAD looking on, cheered only by the hope that the heavy rain would wash the soot off before it could have any effect on the fly.  On the whole, the task proved productive of reward.  Either ARPACHSHAD had been mistaken, and the crop had not been attacked by the fly, or the soot had done its work.  Anyhow, the bed bloomed and blossomed, and, at the time I left for Midlothian, was looking exceedingly well.  Then came SARK’S telegram, as described in the last chapter.  After the fly came the mildew.  Close on the heels, or rather the wings, of the Anthomyia Ceparum, fell the Peronospora Schleideniana.

“It isn’t often it happens,” said ARPACHSHAD, rubbing his hands gleefully;—­“but, when you get one on the top of t’other, you don’t look for much crop in that particular year.”

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