When the place was finished in this manner, and put into a proper posture of defence,—it was invested,—and my uncle _Toby_ and the corporal began to run their first parallel.—I beg I may not be interrupted in my story, by being told, _That the first parallel should be at least three hundred toises distant from the main body of the place,—and that I have not left a single inch for it;_——for my uncle _Toby_ took the liberty of incroaching upon his kitchen-garden, for the sake of enlarging his works on the bowling-green, and for that reason generally ran his first and second parallels betwixt two rows of his cabbages and his cauliflowers; the conveniences and inconveniences of which will be considered at large in the history of my uncle _Toby_’s and the corporal’s campaigns, of which, this I’m now writing is but a sketch, and will be finished, if I conjecture right, in three pages (but there is no guessing)——The campaigns themselves will take up as many books; and therefore I apprehend it would be hanging too great a weight of one kind of matter in so flimsy a performance as this, to rhapsodize them, as I once intended, into the body of the work——surely they had better be printed apart,——we’ll consider the affair——so take the following sketch of them in the mean time. C H A P. LXV WHEN the town, with its works, was finished, my uncle _Toby_ and the corporal began to run their first parallel——not at random, or any how——but from the same points and distances the allies had begun to run theirs; and regulating their approaches and attacks, by the accounts my uncle _Toby_ received from the daily papers,—they went on, during the whole siege, step by step with the allies. When the duke of _Marlborough_ made a lodgment,——my uncle _Toby_ made a lodgment too.——And when the face of a bastion was battered down, or a defence ruined,—the corporal took his mattock and did as much,—and so on;——gaining ground, and making themselves masters of the works one after another, till the town fell into their hands.