hobbit

uried, still hidden and untouched. "I have enough to last me my time," said Bilbo, when
they had dug it up. "You had better take this, Gandalf. I daresay you can find a use for
it."
"Indeed I can!" said the wizard. "But share and share alike! You may find you have more
needs than you expect."
So they put the gold in bags and slung them on the ponies, who were not at all pleased
about it. After that their going was slower, for most of the time they walked. But the land
was green and there was much grass through which the hobbit strolled along
contentedly. He mopped his face with a red silk handkerchief-no! not a single one of his
own had survived, he had borrowed this one from Elrond -for now June had brought
summer, and the weather was bright and hot again.
As all things come to an end, even this story, a day came at last when they were in sight
of the country where Bilbo had been born and bred, where the shapes of the land and of
the trees were as well known to him as his hands and toes. Coming to a rise he could
see his own Hill in the distance, and he stopped suddenly and said:
"Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.
Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known."
Gandalf looked at him. "My dear Bilbo!" he said. "Something is the matter with you! You
are not the hobbit that you were."
And so they crossed the bridge and passed the mill by the river and came right back to
Bilbo's own door. "Bless me! What's going on?" he cried. There was a great commotion,
and people of all sorts, respectable and unrespectable, were thick round the door, and
many were going in and out-not even wiping their feet on the mat, as Bilbo noticed with
annoyance.
If he was surprised, they were more surprised still. He had arrived back in the middle of
an auction! There was a large notice in black and red hung on the gate, stating that on
June the Twenty-second Messrs. Grubb, Grubb, and Bun-owes would sell by auction the
effects of the late Bilbo Baggins Esquire, of Bag-End, Underhill, Hobbiton. Sale to
commence at ten o'clock sharp. It was now nearly lunch-time, and most of the things had
already been sold, for various prices from next to nothing to old songs (as is not unusual
at auctions). Bilbo's cousins the Sackville-Bagginses were, in fact, busy measuring his
rooms to see if their own furniture would fit. In short Bilbo was "Presumed Dead," and
not everybody that said so was sorry to find the presumption wrong.
The return of Mr. Bilbo Baggins created quite a disturbance, both under the Hill and over
the Hill, and across the Water; it was a great deal more than a nine days' wonder. The