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Bingo inched forward hesitently to have a closer look. He instinctively liked the old man with the grey beard and couldn't understand why Sondo was being so pig headed. There was something about the man's face and eyes that made Bingo want to trust him. He didn't look or sound anything like any of the ruffians he'd met before. He could not imagine this man killing his parents, even though he was undoubtedly the tallest person that Bingo had ever seen.
Bingo came a step closer and then piped up, "You were the one who left the medicine, weren't you. I drank it all. Every drop, and my side is starting to feel better already. I think maybe I won't lay down and die. I am going to be alright, aren't I? Maybe you could just have a look at it?"
The man chuckled, sat down on a log, and took a pipe out of the folds of his robe and began to smoke. The stranger deftly blew a smoke ring in the air that was shaped like an elaborate sailing ship on the ocean, the kind that Bingo had never seen in real life but which had always fascinated him in books. Bingo's eyes grew wide with admiration, and his jar dropped open in surprise. In utter excitement, he burst out, "I've never seen anyone blow a smokering like that, not the best smokers in the Shire and Buckland. I know who you are, or at least I know somebody who used to tell stories about you. Old Bilbo, Frodo's kin, the daft hobbit who disappeared from the Shire years ago, used to talk about a strange tall fellow who could blow smokerings like you wouldn't believe.....even better than the rings a dragon can blow. Cousin Merry told me about Bilbo's stories. That's got to be you!" He looked quizzically over at the stranger.
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