"J.R.R. Tolkien - The History of Middle-Earth - 07" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tolkien J.R.R)

happily to end of [his] days') - and a restlessness: desire to see either
Sea or Mountains while his days last. Confesses to a slight re-
luctance to leave the ring, mixed with an oddly opposite feeling.
Says to Gandalf he sometimes feels it is like an eye looking at [him].


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These two things give Gandalf food for thought. He helps Bilbo
therefore with his preparations - but keeps an eye on the Ring.
(Cut out a lot of the genealogical stuff and most of the Sackville-
Baggins stuff.)
Then Gandalf goes off and is absent for 3 and 7 years. At the end
of the last absence (14 - 15 years after Bilbo's disappearance)
Gandalf returns and actually stays with Frodo. Then he explains
what he has discovered. But he does not advise Frodo yet to go off,
though he does mention the Cracks of Doom and the Fiery
Mountain.
He departs again; and Frodo becomes restless. As Gandalf does
not come back for a year and more Frodo forms the idea of going
perhaps to the Cracks of Doom, but at any rate to Rivendell. There
he will get advice. He finally makes his plans with his friends Merry
and [Folco >] Faramond' (no Odo) and Sam. They go off just as the
Black Riders come to Hobbiton.
Gandalf finds out about the Black Riders but is delayed, because
the Dark Lord is hunting him (or because of Treebeard). He is
alarmed at finding Frodo gone and immediately rides off to
Buckland, but is again too late. He loses their trail owing to the
Old Forest escapade, and actually gets ahead. He falls in with
Trotter. Who is Trotter?

At the end of this sketch my father for a moment contemplated an
entirely novel answer to this question: that Trotter was 'a disguised elf
- friend of Bilbo's in Rivendell.' He was one of the Rivendell scouts, of
whom many were sent out, and he 'pretends to be a ranger'. This was
struck out, probably as soon as written.
If this is compared with the note dated August 1939 given in VI.374
it will be seen that a passage in the latter bears a distinct similarity to
what is said here:

Gandalf does not tell Frodo to leave Shire ... The plan for leaving
was entirely Frodo's. Dreams or some other cause [added: restless-
ness] have made him decide to go journeying (to find Cracks of
Doom? after seeking counsel of Elrond). Gandalf simply vanishes
for years.... Gandalf is simply trying to find them, and is des-
perately upset when he discovers Frodo has left Hobbiton.

That Treebeard was a hostile being, and that he held Gandalf in
captivity during the crucial time, appeared in the 'third phase' Chapter