sergeant who formed part of his suite, and began to masticate the said
fragment, assuring his lieutenants that hunger was a chimera, and that,
besides, people were never hungry when they had anything to chew.

This joke satisfied some of those who had resisted Monk's first
deduction drawn from the neighborhood of Lambert's army; the number of
the dissentients diminished greatly; the guard took their posts, the
patrols began, and the general continued his frugal repast beneath his
open tent.

Between his camp and that of the enemy stood an old abbey, of which,
at the present day, there only remain some ruins, but which then was
in existence, and was called Newcastle Abbey. It was built upon a vast
site, independent at once of the plain and of the river, because it was
almost a marsh fed by springs and kept up by rains. Nevertheless, in
the midst of these pools of water, covered with long grass, rushes,
and reeds, were seen solid spots of ground, formerly used as the
kitchen-garden, the park, the pleasure-gardens, and other dependencies
of the abbey, looking like one of those great sea-spiders, whose body is
round, whilst the claws go diverging round from this circumference.

The kitchen-garden, one of the longest claws of the abbey, extended to
Monk's camp. Unfortunately it was, as we have said, early in June, and
the kitchen-garden, being abandoned, offered no resources.

Monk had ordered this spot to be guarded, as most subject to surprises.
The fires of the enemy's general were plainly to be perceived on the
other side of the abbey. But between these fires and the abbey extended
the Tweed, unfolding its luminous scales beneath the thick shade of
tall green oaks. Monk was perfectly well acquainted with this position,
Newcastle and its environs having already more than once been his
headquarters. He knew that by day his enemy might without doubt throw a
few scouts into these ruins and promote a skirmish, but that by night he
would take care to abstain from such a risk. He felt himself, therefore,
in security.

Thus his soldiers saw him, after what he boastingly called his
supper--that is to say, after the exercise of mastication reported by
us at the commencement of this chapter--like Napoleon on the eve of
Austerlitz, seated asleep in his rush chair, half beneath the light of
his lamp, half beneath the reflection of the moon, commencing its ascent
in the heavens, which denoted that it was nearly half past nine in