Heed no nightly noises

[CSteefel]

Great thread and posts.

I think your explanations are reasonable, and in fact supported by several lines of evidence. It may in fact be noteworthy that the Hobbits heard no "nightly noises" on their second night (the night of the 27th, by which time the Witch King and the two Nazgul must have left the Barrow Downs). I had previously taken these "nightly noises" as just the over-active imaginations of the Hobbits, but it seems to make sense that this in fact was the evil things in the Old Forest roused by the visit of the Witch King.

And as has been mentioned, Bombadil clearly had a good deal more knowledge of who was in the neighborhood than he let on initially, so I don't doubt that he was aware of the visit of the WK just to the east. The presence of Aragorn to the north may be less important for the story, but there is perhaps a hint here also that Bombadil knew he was there, since in commenting on the jewels and swords they find in the Barrow, he mentions that the swords were
.

..forged many long years ago by Men of Westernesse: they were foes of the Dark Lord, but they were overcome by the evil king of Carn Dum in the Land of Angmar.
'Few now remember them,' Tom murmured, 'yet still some go wandering, sons of forgotten kings walking in loneliness, guarding from evil things folk that are heedless.'

If this were not a direct enough reference to the Dunadan, the hobbits are then visited with a vision of the Dunadan and Aragorn:

...a vision as it were of a great expanse of years behind them, like a vast shadowy plain over which there strode shapes of Men, tall and grim with bright swords, and last came one with a star on his brow.

Of course, it is one of the themes of the Bombadil chapter that the Hobbits are visited by visions, whether while waking or asleep, and that these visions are somehow connected with the power of Bombadil.