way off their track.
     “It looks as if my dreams were coming true,” gasped Bombur puffing up
behind. He wanted to rush straight off into the wood after the lights.
But the others remembered only too well the warnings of the wizard and
of
     “But without a feast we shan’t remain alive much longer anyway,” said
Bombur, and Bilbo heartily agreed with him. They argued about it
backwards and forwards for a long while, until they agreed at length
to send out a couple of spies, to creep near the lights and find out
more about them. But then they could not agree on who was to be sent:
no one seemed anxious to run the chance of being lost and never
finding his friends again. In the end, in spite of warnings, hunger
decided them, because Bombur kept on describing all the good things
that were being eaten, according to his dream, in the woodland feast;
so they all left the path and plunged into the forest
     After a good deal of creeping and crawling they peered round the
trunks and looked into a clearing where some trees had been felled and
the ground levelled. There were many people there, elvish-looking
folk, all dressed in green and brown and sitting on sawn rings of the
felled trees in a great circle. There was a fire in their midst and