is this? Your lullaby would waken a drunken goblin! Yet I thank you.”
“And your snores would waken a stone dragon - yet we thank you,” they
answered with laughter. “It is drawing towards dawn, and you have
slept now since the night’s beginning. Tomorrow, perhaps, you will be
cured of weariness.”
     “A little sleep does a great cure in the house of Elrond,” said he;
“but I will take all the cure I can get. A
     Weariness fell from him soon in that house, and he had many a merry
jest and dance, early and late, with the elves of the valley. Yet even
that place could not long delay him now, and he thought always of his
own home. After a week, therefore, he said farewell to Elrond, and
giving him such small gifts as he would accept, he rode away with
Gandalf. Even as they left the valley the sky darkened in the West
before them, and wind and rain came up to meet them.
     “Merry is May-time!” said Bilbo, as the rain beat into his face. “But
our back is to legends and we are coming home. I suppose this is a
first taste of it.”
     “There is a long road yet,” said Gandalf.
     “But it is the last road,” said Bilbo. They came to the river that
marked the very edge of the borderland of the Wild, and to the ford