The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

he.
    “And what brought you back in the nick of time?” “Looking behind,” said he.
    “Exactly!” said Thorin; “but could you be more plain?”
    “I went on to spy out our road. It will soon become dangerous and difficult. Also I was anxious about replenishing our small
     stock of provisions. I had not gone very far, however, when I met a couple of friends of mine from Rivendell.”
    “Where’s that?” asked Bilbo.
    “Don’t interrupt!” said Gandalf. “You will get there in a few days now, if we’re lucky, and find out all about it. As I was saying I met two of Elrond’s people. They were hurrying along for fear of the trolls. It was they who
     told me that three of them had come down from the mountains and settled in the woods not far from the road: they had frightened
     everyone away from the district, and they waylaid strangers.
    “I immediately had a feeling that I was wanted back. Looking behind I saw a fire in the distance and made for it. So now you
     know. Please be more careful, next time, or we shall never get anywhere!”
    “Thank you!” said Thorin.

Chapter
III
A SHORT REST
    They did not sing or tell stories that day, even though the weather improved; nor the next day, nor the day after. They had
begun to feel that danger was not far away on either side. They camped under the stars, and their horses had more to eat than
they had; for there was plenty of grass, but there was not much in their bags, even with what they had got from the trolls.
One morning they forded a river at a wide shallow place full of the noise of stones and foam. The far bank was steep and slippery.
When they got to the top of it, leading their ponies, they saw that the great mountains had marched down very near to them.
Already they seemed only a day’s easy journey from the feet of the nearest. Dark and drear it looked, though there were patches
of sunlight on its brown sides, and behind its shoulders the tips of snow-peaks gleamed.
    “Is that
The
Mountain?” asked Bilbo in a solemn voice, looking at it with round eyes. He had never seen a thing that looked so big before.
    “Of course not!” said Balin. “That is only the beginning of the Misty Mountains, and we have got to get through, or over,
or under those somehow, before we can come into Wilderland beyond. And it is a deal of a way even from the other side of them
to the Lonely Mountain in the East where Smaug lies on our treasure.”
    “O!” said Bilbo, and just at that moment he felt more tired than he ever remembered feeling before. He was thinking once again
of his comfortable chair before the fire in his favourite sitting-room in his hobbit-hole, and of the kettle singing. Not
for the last time!
    Now Gandalf led the way. “We must not miss the road, or we shall be done for,” he said. “We need food, for one thing,
and
rest in reasonable safety—also it is very necessary to tackle the Misty Mountains by the proper path, or else you will get
lost in them, and have to come back and start at the beginning again (if you ever get back at all).”
    They asked him where he was making for, and he answered: “You are come to the very edge of the Wild, as some of you may know.
Hidden somewhere ahead of us is the fair valley of Rivendell where Elrond lives in the Last Homely House. I sent a message
by my friends, and we are expected.”
    That sounded nice and comforting, but they had not got there yet, and it was not so easy as it sounds to find the Last Homely
House west of the Mountains. There seemed to be no trees and no valleys and no hills to break the ground in front of them,
only one vast slope going slowly up and up to meet the feet of the nearest mountain, a wide land the colour of heather and
crumbling rock, with patches and slashes of grass-green and moss-green showing where water might be.
    Morning passed, afternoon came; but in all the silent waste there was no sign of any dwelling. They were growing anxious,
for they saw now