A day's journey out from Staddle, Erling, Hob and their ponies had stopped with the setting sun. Barrow mounds rose like gentle rebukes around them. But Erling figured that if he respected the dead, the dead would respect him. Hob's hermitlike manner ought to find favor as well. That is, if wights were capable of pitying travellers who meant no harm by walking the road where duty led on a mission of peace.
Erling followed Hob's lead, sharing a supper in comfortable quiet of dried beef, mushrooms, blackberries, seedcake, and wintergreen tea. Only muted thrushes and tentative crickets sometimes pushed their voices through deep layers of silence guarded by faint whisperings.
It was an hour after sunset when the wind and the whisperings rose in intensity. Hob and Erling were currying their ponies, having seen to their feeding and watering. The two Hobbits turned to each other simultaneously. The fur curled upwards on their toes as if sensing a nameless menace. Ground fog rolled in. "Let's get out of here."
Putting out the fire, the Hobbits noticed that though they were surrounded by mist, the sky directly above was clear except for thin veils of cloud. One of these veils covered the half-moon. But instead of being dimmed, the moon glowed twice its size, encircled by a halo. "Why, we don't hardly needs a torch to see, but let's carry one for protection." Erling nodded agreement at Hob's suggestion.
The messengers and their animals travelled until they passed through the border of fog and the white-gold moonshadow dissipated. At last they stopped for the night, made a campfire, and settled down to rest.
Now Erling, being a Fallohide and preferring the hunt to farming, was carrying a fowler's net. Before going to sleep under the blue blanket given him by Mrs. Broadbelt, he set up this net. Perhaps in the morning, he might find a game bird caught therein for breakfast ... maybe a duck, quail, or pheasant.
While Erling slept, the tin tube containing the Gathering-In scroll with the message he'd been commissioned to read to wandering Hobbits fell from out his backpack. The tin tube lay next to the campfire, shiny and glinting in the reflected firelight.
[ September 14, 2002: Message edited by: Gandalf_theGrey ]
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