The Hobbit

and it is cold. But I feel it in my bones that this
     place will be attacked again. Smaug knows now how I came down to his hall, and you can trust him to guess where the other
     end of the tunnel is. He will break all this side of the Mountain to bits, if necessary, to stop up our entrance, and if we
     are smashed with it the better he will like it.”
    “You are very gloomy, Mr. Baggins!” said Thorin. “Why has not Smaug blocked the lower end, then, if he is so eager to keep
     us out? He has not, or we should have heard him.”
    “I don’t know, I don’t know—because at first he wanted to try and lure me in again, I suppose, and now perhaps because he
     is waiting till after tonight’s hunt, or because he does not want to damage his bedroom if he can help it—but I wish you would
     not argue. Smaug will be coming out at any minute now, and our only hope is to get well in the tunnel and shut the door.”
    He seemed so much in earnest that the dwarves at last did as he said, though they delayed shutting the door—it seemed a desperate
     plan, for no one knew whether or how they could get it open again from the inside, and the thought of being shut in a place
     from which the only way out led through the dragon’s lair was not one they liked. Also everything seemed quite quiet, both outside and down the tunnel. So for a longish while they sat inside not far down from the half-open door and went
     on talking.
    The talk turned to the dragon’s wicked words about the dwarves. Bilbo wished he had never heard them, or at least that he
     could feel quite certain that the dwarves now were absolutely honest when they declared that they had never thought at all
     about what would happen after the treasure had been won. “We knew it would be a desperate venture,” said Thorin, “and we know
     that still; and I still think that when we have won it will be time enough to think what to do about it. As for your share,
     Mr. Baggins, I assure you we are more than grateful and you shall choose your own fourteenth, as soon as we have anything
     to divide. I am sorry if you are worried about transport, and I admit the difficulties are great—the lands have not become
     less wild with the passing of time, rather the reverse—but we will do whatever we can for you, and take our share of the cost
     when the time comes. Believe me or not as you like!”
    From that the talk turned to the great hoard itself and to the things that Thorin and Balin remembered. They wondered if they
     were still lying there unharmed in the hall below: the spears that were made for the armies of the great King Bladorthin (long
     since dead), each had a thrice-forged head and their shafts were inlaid with cunning gold, but they were never delivered or
     paid for; shields made for warriors long dead; the great golden cup of Thror, two-handed, hammered and carven with birds and
     flowers whose eyes and petals were of jewels; coats of mail gilded and silvered and impenetrable; the necklace of Girion,
     Lord of Dale, made of five hundred emeralds green as grass, which he gave for the arming of his eldest son in a coat of dwarf-linked
     rings the like of which had never been made before, for it was wrought of pure silver to the power and strength of triple
     steel. But fairest of all was the great white gem, which the dwarves had found beneath the roots of the Mountain, the Heart
     of the Mountain, the Arkenstone of Thrain.
    “The Arkenstone! The Arkenstone!” murmured Thorin in the dark, half dreaming with his chin upon his knees. “It was like a
     globe with a thousand facets; it shone like silver in the firelight, like water in the sun, like snow under the stars, like
     rain upon the Moon!”
    But the enchanted desire of the hoard had fallen from Bilbo. All through their talk he was only half listening to them. He
     sat nearest to the door with one ear cocked for any beginnings of a sound without, his other was alert for echoes beyond the
     murmurs of the dwarves, for any whisper of a movement from far below.
    Darkness grew deeper and he grew ever more uneasy. “Shut the door!” he begged them, “I fear that dragon in my marrow. I like
     this silence far less than the uproar of last night. Shut the door before it is too late!”
    Something in his voice gave the dwarves an uncomfortable feeling. Slowly Thorin shook off his dreams and getting up he kicked
     away the stone that wedged the door. Then they thrust upon it, and it closed with a