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years ago last Thursday, and has never been seen
     by you since–”
    “True, true,” said Thorin.
    “Well, your father gave me this to give to you; and if I have chosen my own time and way for handing it over, you can hardly
     blame me, considering the trouble I had to find you. Your father could not remember his own name when he gave me the paper,
     and he never told me yours; so on the whole I think I ought to be praised and thanked! Here it is,” said he handing the map
     to Thorin.
    “I don’t understand,” said Thorin, and Bilbo felt he would have liked to say the same. The explanation did not seem to explain.
    “Your grandfather,” said the wizard slowly and grimly, “gave the map to his son for safety before he went to the mines of
     Moria. Your father went away to try his luck with the map after your grandfather was killed; and lots of adventures of a most
     unpleasant sort he had, but he never got near the Mountain. How he got there I don’t know, but I found him a prisoner in the
     dungeons of the Necromancer.”
    “Whatever were you doing there?” asked Thorin with a shudder, and all the dwarves shivered.
    “Never you mind. I was finding things out, as usual; and a nasty dangerous business it was. Even I, Gandalf, only just escaped.
     I tried to save your father, but it was too late. He was witless and wandering, and had forgotten almost everything except
     the map and the key.”
    “We have long ago paid the goblins of Moria,” said Thorin; “we must give a thought to the Necromancer.”
    “Don’t be absurd! He is an enemy far beyond the powers of all the dwarves put together, if they could all be collected again from the four corners of the world. The one thing your father wished was for his son to read the map
     and use the key. The dragon and the Mountain are more than big enough tasks for you!”
    “Hear, hear!” said Bilbo, and accidentally said it aloud.
    “Hear what?” they all said turning suddenly towards him, and he was so flustered that he answered “Hear what I have got to
     say!”
    “What’s that?” they asked.
    “Well, I should say that you ought to go East and have a look round. After all there is the Side-door, and dragons must sleep
     sometimes, I suppose. If you sit on the door-step long enough, I daresay you will think of something. And well, don’t you
     know, I think we have talked long enough for one night, if you see what I mean. What about bed, and an early start, and all
     that? I will give you a good breakfast before you go.”
    “Before
we
go, I suppose you mean,” said Thorin. “Aren’t you the burglar? And isn’t sitting on the door-step your job, not to speak
     of getting inside the door? But I agree about bed and breakfast. I like six eggs with my ham, when starting on a journey:
     fried not poached, and mind you don’t break ’em.”
    After all the others had ordered their breakfasts without so much as a please (which annoyed Bilbo very much), they all got
     up. The hobbit had to find room for them all, and filled all his spare-rooms and made beds on chairs and sofas, before he
     got them all stowed and went to his own little bed very tired and not altogether happy. One thing he did make his mind up about was not to bother to get up very early and cook everybody else’s wretched breakfast. The Tookishness was wearing
     off, and he was not now quite so sure that he was going on any journey in the morning.
    As he lay in bed he could hear Thorin still humming to himself in the best bedroom next to him:
    Far over the misty mountains cold
    To dungeons deep and caverns old
    We must away, ere break of day,
    To find our long-forgotten gold.
    Bilbo went to sleep with that in his ears, and it gave him very uncomfortable dreams. It was long after the break of day,
     when he woke up.

Chapter
II
ROAST MUTTON
    Up jumped Bilbo, and putting on his dressing-gown went into the dining-room. There he saw nobody, but all the signs of a large
     and hurried