The Hobbit

be sheltering
     them.
    “It was a good story, that of yours,” said Beorn, “but I like it still better now I am sure it is true. You must forgive my
     not taking your word. If you lived near the edge of Mirkwood, you would take the word of no one that you did not know as well
     as your brother or better. As it is, I can only say that I have hurried home as fast as I could to see that you were safe,
     and to offer you any help that I can. I shall think more kindly of dwarves after this. Killed the Great Goblin, killed the
     Great Goblin!” he chuckled fiercely to himself.
    “What did you do with the goblin and the Warg?” asked Bilbo suddenly.
    “Come and see!” said Beorn, and they followed round the house. A goblin’s head was stuck outside the gate and a warg-skin
     was nailed to a tree just beyond. Beorn was a fierce enemy. But now he was their friend, and Gandalf thought it wise to tell
     him their whole story and the reason of their journey, so that they could get the most help he could offer.
    This is what he promised to do for them. He would provide ponies for each of them, and a horse for Gandalf, for their journey
     to the forest, and he would lade them with food to last them for weeks with care, and packed so as to be as easy as possible
     to carry—nuts, flour, sealed jars of dried fruits, and red earthenware pots of honey, and twice-baked cakes that would keep
     good a long time, and on a little of which they could march far. The making of these was one of his secrets; but honey was
     in them, as in most of his foods, and they were good to eat, though they made one thirsty. Water, he said, they would not need to carry
     this side of the forest, for there were streams and springs along the road. “But your way through Mirkwood is dark, dangerous
     and difficult,” he said. “Water is not easy to find there, nor food. The time is not yet come for nuts (though it may be past
     and gone indeed before you get to the other side), and nuts are about all that grows there fit for food; in there the wild
     things are dark, queer, and savage. I will provide you with skins for carrying water, and I will give you some bows and arrows.
     But I doubt very much whether anything you find in Mirkwood will be wholesome to eat or to drink. There is one stream there,
     I know, black and strong which crosses the path. That you should neither drink of, nor bathe in; for I have heard that it
     carries enchantment and a great drowsiness and forgetfulness. And in the dim shadows of that place I don’t think you will
     shoot anything, wholesome or unwholesome, without straying from the path. That you MUST NOT do, for any reason.
    “That is all the advice I can give you. Beyond the edge of the forest I cannot help you much; you must depend on your luck
     and your courage and the food I send with you. At the gate of the forest I must ask you to send back my horse and my ponies.
     But I wish you all speed, and my house is open to you, if ever you come back this way again.”
    They thanked him, of course, with many bows and sweepings of their hoods and with many an “at your service, O master of the
     wide wooden halls!” But their spirits sank at his grave words, and they all felt that the adventure was far more dangerous than they had thought, while
     all the time, even if they passed all the perils of the road, the dragon was waiting at the end.
    All that morning they were busy with preparations. Soon after midday they ate with Beorn for the last time, and after the
     meal they mounted the steeds he was lending them, and bidding him many farewells they rode off through his gate at a good
     pace.
    As soon as they left his high hedges at the east of his fenced lands they turned north and then bore to the north-west. By
     his advice they were no longer making for the main forest-road to the south of his land. Had they followed the pass, their
     path would have led them down a stream from the mountains that joined the great river miles south of the Carrock. At that
     point there was a deep ford which they might have passed, if they had still had their ponies, and beyond that a track led
     to the skirts of the wood and to the entrance of the old forest road. But Beorn had warned them that that way was now often
     used by the goblins, while the forest-road itself, he had heard, was overgrown and disused at the eastern end and led to impassable
     marshes where the paths had long been lost. Its eastern opening had also