Author's notes:

The stick-and-ball game being played in this story is my poor attempt to recreate an early form of cricket, which someone tried to explain to me. I say "tried", because it still doesn't make much sense. Ah, well. Hopefully it sounds real enough in this story.

Ditch-jumping is a sport I read about in "The Wheel on the School", a lovely book, if you haven't run across it yet. The first chapter is rather slow and dreamy, but pretty soon you'll be gulping down the chapters at a run, if you're anything like we were when we read it aloud.

This story came out of nowhere, kind of like the fissures and cracks of Moria. If the ending seems too abrupt, well, you know what happened, don't you? And if you don't, go and read "The Fellowship of the Ring".

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