4. Of the Finding of the Ring
     

     As is told in The Hobbit, there came one day to Bilbo's door the great
Wizard, Gandalf the Grey, and thirteen dwarves with him: none other,
indeed, than Thorin Oakenshield, descendant of kings, and his twelve
companions in exile. With them he set out, to his own lasting
astonishment, on a morning of April, it being then the year 1341
Shire-reckoning, on a quest of great treasure, the dwarf-hoards of the
Kings under the Mountain, beneath Erebor in Dale, far off in the East.
The quest was successful, and the Dragon that guarded the hoard was
destroyed. Yet, though before all was won the Battle of Five Armies
was fought, and Thorin was slain, and many deeds of renown were done,
the matter would scarcely have concerned later history, or earned more
than a note in the long annals of the Third Age, but for an 'accident'
by the way. The party was assailed by Orcs in a high pass of the Misty
Mountains as they went towards Wilderland; and so it happened that
Bilbo was lost for a while in the black orc-mines deep under the
mountains, and there, as he groped in vain in the dark, he put his
hand on a ring, lying on the floor of a tunnel. He put it in his