cared very little
whether there was or was not any meat in Coldstream. Monk, little
accustomed to barley-cakes, was hungry, and his staff, at least as
hungry as himself, looked with anxiety right and left, to know what was
being prepared for supper.

Monk ordered search to be made; his scouts had on arriving in the place
found it deserted and the cupboards empty; upon butchers and bakers it
was of no use depending in Coldstream. The smallest morsel of bread,
then, could not be found for the general's table.

As accounts succeeded each other, all equally unsatisfactory, Monk,
seeing terror and discouragement upon every face, declared that he was
not hungry; besides, they should eat on the morrow, since Lambert was
there probably with the intention of giving battle, and consequently
would give up his provisions, if he were forced from Newcastle, or
forever to relieve Monk's soldiers from hunger if he conquered.

This consolation was only efficacious upon a very small number; but of
what importance was it to Monk? for Monk was very absolute, under the
appearance of the most perfect mildness. 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, w