It was a nice summer morning; the Sun had only just showed her face above the horizon as I crossed the Brandywine. To my right was Buckland, but I did not turn that way. While it’s said by many in the Shire that Buckland is outside the Bounds, we Tooks have far too many family connexions there. If I showed my face at Brandy Hall, news would quickly be sent to the Thain by the new Master of Buckland, Marmadoc Brandybuck. I had met him a time or two, and I had no doubt he would find a way to detain me until my father should fetch me home. His folk, I had heard by way of gossip, were already calling him “the Masterful”. No, I had no wish to encounter him.

Instead, I kept on the Road, heading East. From what I had heard from Gandalf and other travellers, it was a good two days’ journey to Bree. I would spend another night beneath the stars, and the next night I would find an inn in Bree.

So far, I had not noticed much difference in the surroundings. From the way many hobbits spoke, it seemed that just to cross the Brandywine would take one into strange lands. But so far as I could tell, I was just passing more small farms and wooded copses and the occasional hill being grazed by sheep on my left, and to my right the eaves of the Old Forest. Much as I hoped to find Adventure, I had no desire to go into that dark place, of which many unpleasant tales had been told.

For second breakfast, I ate a mushroom pasty in my hand as I rode, and munched on a pear, washed down with water from my waterskin. I determined, however, to stop for elevenses. I did so, near a small streamlet north of the Road, where I made myself a cup of tea to go with my bread and cheese, and found some lovely blackberries for afters. It was tempting to take a nap in the summer sunshine, but I resisted the temptation, and went on my way once more.

Soon I realized I was seeing fewer and fewer farms and sheep. And the cottages on the farms I did see were much larger. I realized they were meant for Men, and not for hobbits, and a wholly delicious thrill ran down my spine! It was quite probable that I would be encountering some of those large beings! Of course, I had met Gandalf many times, but he was different, after all. He was a Wizard, and I was not at all sure that he was like an ordinary Man.

As it turned out, the first person I saw was not a Man, but a woman of that race. She was rather elderly, and was herding a flock of geese across a stile. She had got most of them over, but one old gander, clearly a stubborn fowl, was not only refusing to go over the stile, but attempting to flee.

I reined in my pony and dismounted as the gander ran in my direction, and between the two of us we soon had shooed him across the stile. She turned to me, and said in a quavering voice: “I thanks ye, Master Hobbit! Old Snapper there, he can be a mite stubborn!”

I gazed up at her. She was not quite twice my height, stooped with age as she was, but other than her size and her shoe-clad feet and her rounded ears, she could have been any hobbit gammer, with her grey curls tied up in a kerchief, and her blue eyes, sharp as gimlets, and the lines of laughter and years about her eyes and mouth.

“You are quite welcome.” I gave her a bow. “I am Hildifons of the Shire at your service.”

She gave a bob of the head and a very nearly toothless smile, and said, “Mistress Polly Thistlewool at yours, little master. And what is taking a hobbit of the Shire so far from home, may I ask?”

I found that I liked this Mistress Polly very much, in spite of her Outlandish name, and grinned back at her. “I had a fancy to see Bree, Mistress.”

She nodded. “You must be a Brandybuck, then. Them’s the only Shire hobbits we see out this way. My son is out with the sheep, and I was heading to the house to take my nuncheon. Would you care to keep me company, Master Hildifons?” She gestured to the cottage at the end of the path from the stile. It looked much like a hobbit cottage, with its stone walls and thatched roof, save that the door and the window were square, of all things!

I followed her in. The room was not so very much larger than a hobbit house, but it was much higher--the rafters were a good nine feet up at least, and I saw a small loft with a ladder leading up to it at one end.

Delicious smells reached me--there was a garden soup simmering on the hearth--I could smell the potatoes and the tomatoes and the carrots and celery and onion and thyme and summer savory among other toothsome smells--and she took up the flat shovel to draw out some ash cakes from the embers.

We sat and talked, or rather, she talked and I listened, as she told me of her two married daughters who lived in Bree, and her married son who lived on another nearby holding, and her youngest son who still lived at home and cared for her and would have the little farm when she was gone. I learned all their names and the names of her seven grandchildren, and she gave me a message for her oldest daughter who was married to an innkeeper in Bree.

“Now, you be sure to stay to the Prancing Pony, Master Hildifons, as it’s the nicest inn in Bree, or indeed in all the Bree-lands! But you won’t make the rest of the journey today. Would you stop here with us, this night? I don’t like to think of you going in sight of those Barrows, and it being so late in the day and all.”

“Barrows?” I asked. Indeed, we’d heard tales of those Barrows even in the Tooklands, though I had always thought of them as so much moonshine. They were the sorts of tales tweens told to frighten one another around the harvest bonfires.

“Oh yes, little master! They’re right shuddersome, they are! When we go to visit my daughters, we always leave as early in the day as we can, so as to have them behind us while the Sun is still high!”

I gave a little shudder myself, and found myself considering her offer. But I still wanted to put more distance between myself and the Shire.

We ate of her excellent soup and tasty ash cakes, and finished up with some strawberries from her patch. Then, over her blushing protests, I assisted her in washing up.

As I made my farewells, she warned me once again about the dangers of the road, and of the Barrow-downs. I wish that I had listened to her.