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By Root 1636 0

though I guessed why it was; and the reason that I guessed was not the one that most of the Hobbits gave me: that he had early been left very well off and his own master. No, I guessed that he wanted to remain “unattached” for some reason deep down which he did not understand himself – or would not acknowledge, for it alarmed him. He wanted, all the same, to be free to go when the chance came, or he had made up his courage. I remembered how he used to pester me with questions when he was a youngster about the Hobbits that had occasionally “gone off ”, as they said in the Shire. There were at least two of his uncles on the Took side that had done so.’

These uncles were Hildifons Took, who ‘went off on a journey and never returned’, and Isengar Took (the youngest of the Old Took’s twelve children), who was ‘said to have “gone to sea” in his youth’ (The Lord of the Rings Appendix C, Family Tree of Took of Great Smials).

When Gandalf accepted Thorin’s invitation to go with him to his home in the Blue Mountains

‘we actually passed through the Shire, though Thorin would not stop long enough for that to be useful. Indeed I think it was annoyance with his haughty disregard of the Hobbits that first put into my head the idea of entangling him with them. As far as he was concerned they were just food-growers who happened to work the fields on either side of the Dwarves’ ancestral road to the Mountains.’

In this earlier version Gandalf gave a long account of how, after his visit to the Shire, he returned to Thorin and persuaded him ‘to put aside his lofty designs and go secretly – and take Bilbo with him’ – which sentence is all that is said of it in the later version (p. 418).

‘At last I made up my mind, and I went back to Thorin. I found him in conclave with some of his kinsfolk. Balin and Glóin were there, and several others.

‘ “Well, what have you got to say?” Thorin asked me as soon as I came in.

‘ “This first,” I answered. “Your own ideas are those of a king, Thorin Oakenshield; but your kingdom is gone. If it is to be restored, which I doubt, it must be from small beginnings. Far away here, I wonder if you fully realize the strength of a great Dragon. But that is not all: there is a Shadow growing fast in the world far more terrible. They will help one another.” And they certainly would have done so, if I had not attacked Dol Guldur at the same time. “Open war would be quite useless; and anyway it is impossible for you to arrange it. You will have to try something simpler and yet bolder, indeed something desperate.”

‘“You are both vague and disquieting,” said Thorin. “Speak more plainly!”

‘“Well, for one thing,” I said, “you will have to go on this quest yourself, and you will have to go secretly. No messengers, heralds, or challenges for you, Thorin Oakenshield. At most you can take with you a few kinsmen or faithful followers. But you will need something more, something unexpected.”

‘“Name it!” said Thorin.‘

“One moment!” I said. “You hope to deal with a Dragon; and he is not only very great, but he is now also old and very cunning. From the beginning of your adventure you must allow for this: his memory, and his sense of smell.”

‘“Naturally,” said Thorin. “Dwarves have had more dealings with Dragons than most, and you are not instructing the ignorant.”

‘“Very good,” I answered; “but your own plans did not seem to me to consider this point. My plan is one of stealth. Stealth. * Smaug does not lie on his costly bed without dreams, Thorin Oakenshield. He dreams of Dwarves! You may be sure that he explores his hall day by day, night by night, until he is sure that no faintest air of a Dwarf is near, before he goes to his sleep: his half-sleep, prick-eared for the sound of – Dwarf-feet.”

‘ “You make your stealth sound as difficult and hopeless as any open attack,” said Balin. “Impossibly difficult!”

‘ “Yes, it is difficult,” I answered. “But not impossibly difficult, or I would not waste my time here. I would say absurdly difficult. So I am going to suggest an absurd solution to the problem.