But Fleming showed such a rooted distrust for anything that was intended to 'go off,' and, indeed, such absolute abhorrence of any further mechanical contrivance in the vicinity of the stables, that Archie had transferred his attentions to the garden, where he was full of a scheme for utilizing the water power of the little stream to irrigate the soil, after the fashion of the Nile in Egypt, in a series of canals between the beds, and had already made the hose-pipe work with capital effect by means of a siphon and an old barrel.