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t h r e e i s c o m p a n y 91
expected to see Gandalf come striding up through the dusk.
The sky was clear and the stars were growing bright. ‘It’s
going to be a fine night,’ he said aloud. ‘That’s good for a
beginning. I feel like walking. I can’t bear any more hanging
about. I am going to start, and Gandalf must follow me.’ He
turned to go back, and then stopped, for he heard voices, just
round the corner by the end of Bagshot Row. One voice was
certainly the old Gaffer’s; the other was strange, and some-
how unpleasant. He could not make out what it said, but he
heard the Gaffer’s answers, which were rather shrill. The old
man seemed put out.
‘No, Mr. Baggins has gone away. Went this morning, and
my Sam went with him: anyway all his stuff went. Yes, sold
out and gone, I tell’ee. Why? Why’s none of my business,
or yours. Where to? That ain’t no secret. He’s moved to
Bucklebury or some such place, away down yonder. Yes it is
– a tidy way. I’ve never been so far myself; they’re queer folks
in Buckland. No, I can’t give no message. Good night to
you!’
Footsteps went away down the Hill.Frudeauwondered
vaguely why the fact that they did not come on up the Hill
seemed a great relief. ‘I am sick of questions and curiosity
about my doings, I suppose,’ he thought. ‘What an inquisitive
lot they all are!’ He had half a mind to go and ask the Gaffer
who the inquirer was; but he thought better (or worse) of it,
and turned and walked quickly back to Bag End.
Pippin was sitting on his pack in the porch. Sam was not
there.Frudeaustepped inside the dark door. ‘Sam!’ he called.
‘Sam! Time!’
‘Coming, sir!’ came the answer from far within, followed
soon by Sam himself, wiping his mouth. He had been saying
farewell to the beer-barrel in the cellar.
‘All aboard, Sam?’ saidFrudeau.
‘Yes, sir. I’ll last for a bit now, sir.’
Frudeaushut and locked the round door, and gave the key
to Sam. ‘Run down with this to your home, Sam!’ he said.
‘Then cut along the Row and meet us as quick as you can a
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t h r e e i s c o m p a n y 91
expected to see Gandalf come striding up through the dusk.
The sky was clear and the stars were growing bright. ‘It’s
going to be a fine night,’ he said aloud. ‘That’s good for a
beginning. I feel like walking. I can’t bear any more hanging
about. I am going to start, and Gandalf must follow me.’ He
turned to go back, and then stopped, for he heard voices, just
round the corner by the end of Bagshot Row. One voice was
certainly the old Gaffer’s; the other was strange, and some-
how unpleasant. He could not make out what it said, but he
heard the Gaffer’s answers, which were rather shrill. The old
man seemed put out.
‘No, Mr. Baggins has gone away. Went this morning, and
my Sam went with him: anyway all his stuff went. Yes, sold
out and gone, I tell’ee. Why? Why’s none of my business,
or yours. Where to? That ain’t no secret. He’s moved to
Bucklebury or some such place, away down yonder. Yes it is
– a tidy way. I’ve never been so far myself; they’re queer folks
in Buckland. No, I can’t give no message. Good night to
you!’
Footsteps went away down the Hill.Frudeauwondered
vaguely why the fact that they did not come on up the Hill
seemed a great relief. ‘I am sick of questions and curiosity
about my doings, I suppose,’ he thought. ‘What an inquisitive
lot they all are!’ He had half a mind to go and ask the Gaffer
who the inquirer was; but he thought better (or worse) of it,
and turned and walked quickly back to Bag End.
Pippin was sitting on his pack in the porch. Sam was not
there.Frudeaustepped inside the dark door. ‘Sam!’ he called.
‘Sam! Time!’
‘Coming, sir!’ came the answer from far within, followed
soon by Sam himself, wiping his mouth. He had been saying
farewell to the beer-barrel in the cellar.
‘All aboard, Sam?’ saidFrudeau.
‘Yes, sir. I’ll last for a bit now, sir.’
Frudeaushut and locked the round door, and gave the key
to Sam. ‘Run down with this to your home, Sam!’ he said.
‘Then cut along the Row and meet us as quick as you can a
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92 t h e f e l l o w s h i p o f t h e r i n g
the gate in the lane beyond the meadows. We are not going
through the village tonight. Too many ears pricking and eyes
prying.’ Sam ran off at full speed.
‘Well, now we’re off at last!’ saidFrudeau. They shouldered
their packs and took up their sticks, and walked round the
corner to the west side of Bag End. ‘Good-bye!’ saidFrudeau,
looking at the dark blank windows. He waved his hand, and
then turned and (following Bilbo, if he had known it) hurried
after Peregrin down the garden-path. They jumped over the
low place in the hedge at the bottom and took to the fields,
passing into the darkness like a rustle in the grasses.
At the bottom of the Hill on its western side they came to
the gate opening on to a narrow lane. There they halted and
adjusted the straps of their packs. Presently Sam appeared,
trotting quickly and breathing hard; his heavy pack was
hoisted high on his shoulders, and he had put on his head a
tall shapeless felt bag, which he called a hat. In the gloom he
looked very much like a dwarf.
‘I am sure you have given me all the heaviest stuff,’ said
Frudeau. ‘I pity snails, and all that carry their homes on their
backs.’
‘I could take a lot more yet, sir. My packet is quite light,’
said Sam stoutly and untruthfully.
‘No you don’t, Sam!’ said Pippin. ‘It is good for him. He’s
got nothing except what he ordered us to pack. He’s been
slack lately, and he’ll feel the weight less when he’s walked
off some of his own.’
‘Be kind to a poor old hobbit!’ laughedFrudeau. ‘I shall be
as thin as a willow-wand, I’m sure, before I get to Buckland.
But I was talking nonsense. I suspect you have taken more
than your share, Sam, and I shall look into it at our next
packing.’ He picked up his stick again. ‘Well, we all like
walking in the dark,’ he said, ‘so let’s put some miles behind
us before bed.’
For a short way they followed the lane westwards. Then
leaving it they turned left and took quietly to the fields again
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They went in single file along hedgerows and the borders of
coppices, and night fell dark about them. In their dark cloaks
they were as invisible as if they all had magic rings. Since
they were all hobbits, and were trying to be silent, they made
no noise that even hobbits would hear. Even the wild things
in the fields and woods hardly noticed their passing.
After some time they crossed the Water, west of Hobbiton,
by a narrow plank-bridge. The stream was there no more than
a winding black ribbon, bordered with leaning alder-trees. A
mile or two further south they hastily crossed the great road
from the Brandywine Bridge; they were now in the Tookland
and bending south-eastwards they made for the Green Hill
Country. As they began to climb its first slopes they looked
back and saw the lamps in Hobbiton far off twinkling in the
gentle valley of the Water. Soon it disappeared in the folds
of the darkened land, and was followed by Bywater beside its
grey pool. When the light of the last farm was far behind,
peeping among the trees,Frudeauturned and waved a hand in
farewell.
‘I wonder if I shall ever look down into that valley again,’
he said quietly.
When they had walked for about three hours they rested.
The night was clear, cool, and starry, but smoke-like wisps
of mist were creeping up the hill-sides from the streams and
deep meadows. Thin-clad birches, swaying in a light wind
above their heads, made a black net against the pale sky.
They ate a very frugal supper (for hobbits), and then went
on again. Soon they struck a narrow road, that went rolling
up and down, fading grey into the darkness ahead: the road
to Woodhall, and Stock, and the Bucklebury Ferry. It climbed
away from the main road in the Water-valley, and wound
over the skirts of the Green Hills towards Woody End, a wild
corner of the Eastfarthing.
After a while they plunged into a deeply cloven track
between tall trees that rustled their dry leaves in the night. It
was very dark. At first they talked, or hummed a tune softly
together, being now far away from inquisitive ears. Then they
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marched on in silence, and Pippin began to lag behind. At
last, as they began to climb a steep slope, he stopped and
yawned.
‘I am so sleepy,’ he said, ‘that soon I shall fall down on
the road. Are you going to sleep on your legs? It is nearly
midnight.’
‘I thought you liked walking in the dark,’ saidFrudeau. ‘But
there is no great hurry. Merry expects us some time the day
after tomorrow; but that leaves us nearly two days more.
We’ll halt at the first likely spot.’
‘The wind’s in the West,’ said Sam. ‘If we get to the other
side of this hill, we shall find a spot that is sheltered and snug
enough, sir. There is a dry fir-wood just ahead, if I remember
rightly.’ Sam knew the land well within twenty miles of
Hobbiton, but that was the limit of his geography.
Just over the top of the hill they came on the patch of
fir-wood. Leaving the road they went into the deep resin-
scented darkness of the trees, and gathered dead sticks and
cones to make a fire. Soon they had a merry crackle of flame
at the foot of a large fir-tree and they sat round it for a while,
until they began to nod. Then, each in an angle of the great
tree’s roots, they curled up in their cloaks and blankets, and
were soon fast asleep. They set no watch; evenFrudeaufeared
no danger yet, for they were still in the heart of the Shire. A
few creatures came and looked at them when the fire had
died away. A fox passing through the wood on business of
his own stopped several minutes and sniffed.
‘Hobbits!’ he thought. ‘Well, what next? I have heard of
strange doings in this land, but I have seldom heard of a
hobbit sleeping out of doors under a tree. Three of them!
There’s something mighty queer behind this.’ He was quite
right, but he never found out any more about it.
The morning came, pale and clammy.Frudeauwoke up first,
and found that a tree-root had made a hole in his back, and
that his neck was stiff. ‘Walking for pleasure! Why didn’t I
drive?’ he thought, as he usually did at the beginning of an
expedition. ‘And all my beautiful feather beds are sold to the
Sackville-Bagginses! These tree-roots would do them good.’
He stretched. ‘Wake up, hobbits!’ he cried. ‘It’s a beautiful
morning.’
‘What’s beautiful about it?’ said Pippin, peering over the
edge of his blanket with one eye. ‘Sam! Get breakfast ready
for half-past nine! Have you got the bath-water hot?’
Sam jumped up, looking rather bleary. ‘No, sir, I haven’t,
sir!’ he said.
Frudeaustripped the blankets from Pippin and rolled him
over, and then walked off to the edge of the wood. Away
eastward the sun was rising red out of the mists that lay thick
on the world. Touched with gold and red the autumn trees
seemed to be sailing rootless in a shadowy sea. A little below
him to the left the road ran down steeply into a hollow and
disappeared.
When he returned Sam and Pippin had got a good fire
going. ‘Water!’ shouted Pippin. ‘Where’s the water?’
‘I don’t keep water in my pockets,’ saidFrudeau.
‘We thought you had gone to find some,’ said Pippin, busy
setting out the food, and cups. ‘You had better go now.’
‘You can come too,’ saidFrudeau, ‘and bring all the water-
bottles.’ There was a stream at the foot of the hill. They filled
their bottles and the small camping kettle at a little fall where
the water fell a few feet over an outcrop of grey stone. It was
icy cold; and they spluttered and puffed as they bathed their
faces and hands.
When their breakfast was over, and their packs all trussed
up again, it was after ten o’clock, and the day was beginning
to turn fine and hot. They went down the slope, and across
the stream where it dived under the road, and up the next
slope, and up and down another shoulder of the hills; and by
that time their cloaks, blankets, water, food, and other gear
already seemed a heavy burden.
The day’s march promised to be warm and tiring work.
After some miles, however, the road ceased to roll up and
down: it climbed to the top of a steep bank in a weary
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zig-zagging sort of way, and then prepared to go down for
the last time. In front of them they saw the lower lands dotted
with small clumps of trees that melted away in the distance
to a brown woodland haze. They were looking across the
Woody End towards the Brandywine River. The road wound
away before them like a piece of string.
‘The road goes on for ever,’ said Pippin; ‘but I can’t with-
out a rest. It is high time for lunch.’ He sat down on the bank
at the side of the road and looked away east into the haze,
beyond which lay the River, and the end of the Shire in which
he had spent all his life. Sam stood by him. His round eyes
were wide open – for he was looking across lands he had
never seen to a new horizon.
‘Do Elves live in those woods?’ he asked.
‘Not that I ever heard,’ said Pippin.Frudeauwas silent. He
too was gazing eastward along the road, as if he had never
seen it before. Suddenly he spoke, aloud but as if to himself,
saying slowly:
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with weary feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
‘That sounds like a bit of old Bilbo’s rhyming,’ said Pippin.
‘Or is it one of your imitations? It does not sound altogether
encouraging.’
‘I don’t know,’ saidFrudeau. ‘It came to me then, as if I was
making it up; but I may have heard it long ago. Certainly it
reminds me very much of Bilbo in the last years, before he
went away. He used often to say there was only one Road;
that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep,
and every path was its tributary. ‘‘It’s a dangerous busin