The Hobbit

and he shook his head; for if he did not altogether approve of dwarves and their love of
gold, he hated dragons and their cruel wickedness, and he grieved to remember the ruin of the town of Dale and its merry bells,
and the burned banks of the bright River Running. The moon was shining in a broad silver crescent. He held up the map and
the white light shone through it. “What is this?” he said. “There are moon-letters here, beside the plain runes which say
‘five feet high the door and three may walk abreast.’”
    “What are moon-letters?” asked the hobbit full of excitement. He loved maps, as I have told you before; and he also liked
runes and letters and cunning handwriting, though when he wrote himself it was a bit thin and spidery.
    “Moon-letters are rune-letters, but you cannot see them,” said Elrond, “not when you look straight at them. They can only
be seen when the moon shines behind them, and what is more, with the more cunning sort it must be a moon of the same shape
and season as the day when they were written. The dwarves invented them and wrote them with silver pens, as your friends could
tell you. These must have been written on a midsummer’s eve in a crescent moon, a long while ago.”
    “What do they say?” asked Gandalf and Thorin together, a bit vexed perhaps that even Elrond should have found this out first,
though really there had not been a chance before, and there would not have been another until goodness knows when.
    “ Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks ,” read Elrond, “and the setting sun with the last light of Durin’s Day will
shine upon the key-hole.”
    “Durin, Durin!” said Thorin. “He was the father of the fathers of the eldest race of Dwarves, the Longbeards, and my first
ancestor: I am his heir.”
    “Then what is Durin’s Day?” asked Elrond.
    “The first day of the dwarves’ New Year,” said Thorin, “is as all should know the first day of the last moon of Autumn on
the threshold of Winter. We still call it Durin’s Day when the last moon of Autumn and the sun are in the sky together. But
this will not help us much, I fear, for it passes our skill in these days to guess when such a time will come again.”
    “That remains to be seen,” said Gandalf. “Is there any more writing?”
    “None to be seen by this moon,” said Elrond, and he gave the map back to Thorin; and then they went down to the water to see
the elves dance and sing upon the midsummer’s eve.
    The next morning was a midsummer’s morning as fair and fresh as could be dreamed: blue sky and never a cloud, and the sun
dancing on the water. Now they rode away amid songs of farewell and good speed, with their hearts ready for more adventure,
and with a knowledge of the road they must follow over the Misty Mountains to the land beyond.

Chapter
IV
OVER HILL AND UNDER HILL
    There were many paths that led up into those mountains, and many passes over them. But most of the paths were cheats and deceptions
     and led nowhere or to bad ends; and most of the passes were infested by evil things and dreadful dangers. The dwarves and
     the hobbit, helped by the wise advice of Elrond and the knowledge and memory of Gandalf, took the right road to the right
     pass.
    Long days after they had climbed out of the valley and left the Last Homely House miles behind, they were still going up and
     up and up. It was a hard path and a dangerous path, a crooked way and a lonely and a long. Now they could look back over the
     lands they had left, laid out behind them far below. Far, far away in the West, where things were blue and faint, Bilbo knew
     there lay his own country of safe and comfortable things, and his little hobbit-hole. He shivered. It was getting bitter cold
     up here, and the wind came shrill among the rocks. Boulders, too, at times came galloping down the mountain-sides, let loose
     by mid-day sun upon the snow, and passed among them (which was lucky), or over their heads (which was alarming). The nights
     were comfortless and chill, and they did not dare to sing or talk too loud, for the echoes were uncanny, and the silence seemed
     to dislike being broken—except by the noise of water and the wail of wind and the crack of stone.
    “The summer is getting on down below,” thought Bilbo, “and haymaking is going on and picnics. They will be harvesting and
     blackberrying, before we even begin to go down the other side at this rate.” And the others