Every one, therefore, was obliged to be satisfied, or at least to appear so.

Monk, quite as hungry as his people, but affecting perfect indifference for the absent mutton, cut a fragment of tobacco, half an inch long, from the _carotte_ of a sergeant who formed part of his suite, and began to masticate the said fragment, assuring his lieutenant 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.