“I left my poor plough to go ploughing the deep!”
Dibdin.
When the Provost and Cleveland had returned into the public council-room, the former retired a second time with such of his brethren as he thought proper to advise with; and, while they were engaged in discussing Cleveland’s proposal, refreshments were offered to him and his party. These the Captain permitted his people to partake of, but with the greatest precaution against surprisal, one party relieving the guard, whilst the others were at their food.
He himself, in the meanwhile, walked up and down the apartment, and conversed upon indifferent subjects with those present, like a person quite at his ease.
Amongst these individuals he saw, somewhat to his surprise, Triptolemus Yellowley, who, chancing to be at Kirkwall, had been summoned by the Magistrates, as representative, in a certain degree, of the Lord Chamberlain, to attend council on this occasion. Cleveland immediately renewed the acquaintance which he had formed with the agriculturist at Burgh-Westra, and asked him his present business in Orkney.
“Just to look after some of my little plans, Captain Cleveland. I am weary of fighting with wild beasts at Ephesus yonder, and I just cam ower to see how my orchard was thriving, whilk I had planted four or five miles from Kirkwall, it may be a year bygane, and how the bees were thriving, whereof I had imported nine skeps, for the improvement of the country, and for the turning of the heather-bloom into wax and honey.”
“And they thrive, I hope?” said Cleveland, who, however little interested in the matter, sustained the conversation, as if to break the chilly and embarrassed silence which hung upon the company assembled.
“Thrive!” replied Triptolemus; “they thrive like every thing else in this country, and that is the backward way.”
“Want of care, I suppose?” said Cleveland.
“The contrary, sir, quite and clean the contrary,” replied the Factor; “they died of ower muckle care, like Lucky Christie’s chickens.—I asked to see the skeps, and cunning and joyful did the fallow look who was to have taken care of them—‘Had there been ony body in charge but mysell,’ he said, ‘ye might have seen the skeps, or whatever you ca’ them; but there wad hae been as mony solan-geese as flees in them, if it hadna been for my four quarters; for I watched them so closely, that I saw them a’ creeping out at the little holes one sunny morning, and if I had not stopped the leak on the instant with a bit clay, the deil a bee, or flee, or whatever they are, would have been left in the skeps, as ye ca’ them!’—In a word, sir, he had clagged up the hives, as if the puir things had had the pestilence, and my bees were as dead as if they had been smeaked—and so ends my hope, generandi gloria mellis, as Virgilius hath it.”
“There is an end of your mead, then,” replied Cleveland; “but what is your chance of cider?—How does the orchard thrive?”