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It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional
intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept between
the burrows (for it is in Hobbitton that our scene lies), rattling along the
burrow-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled
against the darkness. Through one of the obscurest quarters of Hobbitton, and
among haunts little loved by the gentlemen of the watch, a man, evidently of
the lowest orders, was wending his solitary way. He stopped twice or thrice
at different shops and houses of a description correspondent with the appearance
of the quartier in which they were situated,--and tended inquiry for some article
or another which did not seem easily to be met with. All the answers he received
were couched in the negative; and as he turned from each door he muttered to
himself, in no very elegant phraseology, his disappointment and discontent.
“Hobbit. Shire. Bagginsssssss….”
At length, at one house, the landlord, a sturdy butcher, after rendering the
same reply the inquirer had hitherto received, added,--"But if this vill
do as vell, Nazgul, it is quite at your sarvice!" Pausing reflectively
for a moment, Nazgul responded, that he thought the thing proffered might do
as well; and thrusting it into his ample pocket he rode away with as rapid a
motion as the wind and rain would allow. After many days, he soon came to a
nest of low and dingy buildings, at the entrance to which, in half-effaced characters
was written "Sauron’s Court." Having at the most conspicuous
of these buildings, a workshop, through the half-closed windows of which blazed
out in ruddy comfort the beams of the great fires, he knocked hastily at the
door. He was admitted by a wizard of a certain age, and endowed with a gaunt
thinness of face and person.
"Hast got it, Nazgul?" said the wizard quickly, as he closed the door on the guest.
"Noa, noa! not exactly--but as I thinks as ow . . ."
"Pish, you fool!" cried the wizard interrupting him, peevishly. "Vy, it is no use desaving me. You knows you has only stepped from my boosing ken to another, and you has not been arter the ring at all. So there's the poor cretur a-raving and a-dying, and you . . ."
"Let I speak!" interrupted Nazgul in his turn. "I tells you I vent first to Mother Bussblone's, who, I knows, chops the whiners morning and evening to the young ladies, and I axes there for a Ring, and she says, says she, 'I 'as only a "Companion to the ‘obbit!" but you'll get a Ring, I thinks, as Master Tolkiens,--the cobbler, as preaches.' So I goes to Master Tolkiens, and he says, says he, 'I 'as no call for the Ring--'cause vy?--I 'as a call vithout; but mayhap you'll be a-getting it at the butcher's hover the vay,--'cause vy?--the butcher'll be damned!" So I goes hover the vay, and the butcher says, says he, 'I 'as not a Ring: but I 'as some scrap metal bound for all the world just like 'un, and mayhap the poor cretur mayn't see the difference.' So I takes the metal, Master Sauron, and here they be surely!--and how's poor Judy?"