The Hobbit

with a clang.
    Inside the passages were lit with red torch-light, and the elf-guards sang as they marched along the twisting, crossing, and
     echoing paths. These were not like those of the goblin-cities; they were smaller, less deep underground, and filled with a
     cleaner air. In a great hall with pillars hewn out of the living stone sat the Elvenking on a chair of carven wood. On his
     head was a crown of berries and red leaves, for the autumn was come again. In the spring he wore a crown of woodland flowers.
     In his hand he held a carven staff of oak.

    The Elvenking's Gate.
    The prisoners were brought before him; and though he looked grimly at them, he told his men to unbind them, for they were
     ragged and weary. “Besides they need no ropes in here,” said he. “There is no escape from my magic doors for those who are
     once brought inside.”
    Long and searchingly he questioned the dwarves about their doings, and where they were going to, and where they were coming
     from; but he got little more news out of them than out of Thorin. They were surly and angry and did not even pretend to be
     polite.
    “What have we done, O king?” said Balin, who was the eldest left. “Is it a crime to be lost in the forest, to be hungry and
     thirsty, to be trapped by spiders? Are the spiders your tame beasts or your pets, if killing them makes you angry?”
    Such a question of course made the king angrier than ever, and he answered: “It is a crime to wander in my realm without leave.
     Do you forget that you were in my kingdom, using the road that my people made? Did you not three times pursue and trouble
     my people in the forest and rouse the spiders with your riot and clamour? After all the disturbance you have made I have a
     right to know what brings you here, and if you will not tell me now, I will keep you all in prison until you have learned
     sense and manners!”
    Then he ordered the dwarves each to be put in a separate cell and to be given food and drink, but not to be allowed to pass
     the doors of their little prisons, until one at least of them was willing to tell him all he wanted to know. But he did not
     tell them that Thorin was also a prisoner with him. It was Bilbo who found that out.
    Poor Mr. Baggins—it was a weary long time that he lived in that place all alone, and always in hiding, never daring to take
     off his ring, hardly daring to sleep, even tucked away in the darkest and remotest corners he could find. For something to
     do he took to wandering about the Elvenking’s palace. Magic shut the gates, but he could sometimes get out, if he was quick.
     Companies of the Wood-elves, sometimes with the king at their head, would from time to time ride out to hunt, or to other
     business in the woods and in the lands to the East. Then if Bilbo was very nimble, he could slip out just behind them; though
     it was a dangerous thing to do. More than once he was nearly caught in the doors, as they clashed together when the last elf
     passed; yet he did not dare to march among them because of his shadow (altogether thin and wobbly as it was in torchlight),
     or for fear of being bumped into and discovered. And when he did go out, which was not very often, he did no good. He did
     not wish to desert the dwarves, and indeed he did not know where in the world to go without them. He could not keep up with
     the hunting elves all the time they were out, so he never discovered the ways out of the wood, and was left to wander miserably
     in the forest, terrified of losing himself, until a chance came of returning. He was hungry too outside, for he was no hunter;
     but inside the caves he could pick up a living of some sort by stealing food from store or table when no one was at hand.
    “I am like a burglar that can’t get away, but must go on miserably burgling the same house day after day,” he thought. “This is the dreariest and dullest part of all this wretched,
     tiresome, uncomfortable adventure! I wish I was back in my hobbit-hole by my own warm fireside with the lamp shining!” He
     often wished, too, that he could get a message for help sent to the wizard, but that of course was quite impossible; and he
     soon realized that if anything was to be done, it would have to be done by Mr. Baggins, alone and unaided.
    Eventually, after a week or two of this sneaking sort of life, by watching and following the guards and taking what chances
     he could, he managed to find out where each dwarf was kept.