The Hobbit

was excitement in the camp that night. In the morning they prepared to move once more. Only Bofur and Bombur were left
     behind to guard the ponies and such stores as they had brought with them from the river. The others went down the valley and
     up the newly found path, and so to the narrow ledge. Along this they could carry no bundles or packs, so narrow and breathless
     was it, with a fall of a hundred and fifty feet beside them on to sharp rocks below; but each of them took a good coil of
     rope wound tight about his waist, and so at last without mishap they reached the little grassy bay.
    There they made their third camp, hauling up what they needed from below with their ropes. Down the same way they were able
     occasionally to lower one of the more active dwarves, such as Kili, to exchange such news as there was, or to take a share
     in the guard below, while Bofur was hauled up to the higher camp. Bombur would not come up either the rope or the path.
    “I am too fat for such fly-walks,” he said. “I should turn dizzy and tread on my beard, and then you would be thirteen again.
     And the knotted ropes are too slender for my weight.” Luckily for him that was not true, as you will see.
    In the meanwhile some of them explored the ledge beyond the opening and found a path that led higher and higher on to the
     mountain; but they did not dare to venture very far that way, nor was there much use in it. Out up there a silence reigned,
     broken by no bird or sound except that of the wind in the crannies of stone. They spoke low and never called or sang, for
     danger brooded in every rock. The others who were busy with the secret of the door had no more success. They were too eager
     to trouble about the runes or the moon-letters, but tried without resting to discover where exactly in the smooth face of
     the rock the door was hidden. They had brought picks and tools of many sorts from Lake-town, and at first they tried to use
     these. But when they struck the stone the handles splintered and jarred their arms cruelly, and the steel heads broke or bent
     like lead. Mining work, they saw clearly, was no good against the magic that had shut this door; and they grew terrified,
     too, of the echoing noise.
    Bilbo found sitting on the doorstep lonesome and wearisome—there was not a doorstep, of course, really, but they used to call
     the little grassy space between the wall and the opening the “doorstep” in fun, remembering Bilbo’s words long ago at the
     unexpected party in his hobbit-hole, when he said they could sit on the doorstep till they thought of something. And sit and
     think they did, or wandered aimlessly about, and glummer and glummer they became.
    Their spirits had risen a little at the discovery of the path, but now they sank into their boots; and yet they would not
     give it up and go away. The hobbit was no longer much brighter than the dwarves. He would do nothing but sit with his back
     to the rock-face and stare away west through the opening, over the cliff, over the wide lands to the black wall of Mirkwood,
     and to the distances beyond, in which he sometimes thought he could catch glimpses of the Misty Mountains small and far. If
     the dwarves asked him what he was doing he answered:
    “You said sitting on the doorstep and thinking would be my job, not to mention getting inside, so I am sitting and thinking.”
     But I am afraid he was not thinking much of the job, but of what lay beyond the blue distance, the quiet Western Land and
     the Hill and his hobbit-hole under it.
    A large grey stone lay in the centre of the grass and he stared moodily at it or watched the great snails. They seemed to
     love the little shut-in bay with its walls of cool rock, and there were many of them of huge size crawling slowly and stickily
     along its sides.
    “Tomorrow begins the last week of autumn,” said Thorin one day.
    “And winter comes after autumn,” said Bifur. “And next year after that,” said Dwalin, “and our beards will grow till they
     hang down the cliff to the valley before anything happens here. What is our burglar doing for us? Since he has got an invisible
     ring, and ought to be a specially excellent performer now, I am beginning to think he might go through the Front Gate and
     spy things out a bit!”
    Bilbo heard this—the dwarves were on the rocks just above the enclosure where he was sitting—and “Good Gracious!” he thought,
     “so that is what they are beginning to