return

1304 the return of the king
luck to you! And the oftener you come back the better I’ll be
pleased.’
They wished him farewell and rode away, and passed
through the West-gate and on towards the Shire. Bill the
pony was with them, and as before he had a good deal of
baggage, but he trotted along beside Sam and seemed well
content.
‘I wonder what old Barliman was hinting at,’ said Frodo.
‘I can guess some of it,’ said Sam gloomily. ‘What I saw in
the Mirror: trees cut down and all, and my old gaffer turned
out of the Row. I ought to have hurried back quicker.’
‘And something’s wrong with the Southfarthing evidently,’
said Merry. ‘There’s a general shortage of pipe-weed.’
‘Whatever it is,’ said Pippin, ‘Lotho will be at the bottom
of it: you can be sure of that.’
‘Deep in, but not at the bottom,’ said Gandalf. ‘You have
forgotten Saruman. He began to take an interest in the Shire
before Mordor did.’
‘Well, we’ve got you with us,’ said Merry, ‘so things will
soon be cleared up.’
‘I am with you at present,’ said Gandalf, ‘but soon I shall
not be. I am not coming to the Shire. You must settle its
affairs yourselves; that is what you have been trained for. Do
you not yet understand? My time is over: it is no longer my
task to set things to rights, nor to help folk to do so. And as
for you, my dear friends, you will need no help. You are
grown up now. Grown indeed very high; among the great
you are, and I have no longer any fear at all for any of you.
‘But if you would know, I am turning aside soon. I am
going to have a long talk with Bombadil: such a talk as I have
not had in all my time. He is a moss-gatherer, and I have
been a stone doomed to rolling. But my rolling days are
ending, and now we shall have much to say to one another.’
In a little while they came to the point on the East Road
where they had taken leave of Bombadil; and they hoped and