This is a busy day. The circle is drawing to a close. It is just over one year since the hobbits began their precipitous adventure fleeing from the Black Riders. Today they will begin the final leg of the journey home but they are not the same hobbits who left.

The companions, the hobbits and Gandalf, leave Bree in the morning to a much different send off than the one the year previous. Gandalf travels with them only a short way. At the point on the East Road where Tom Bombadil took leave of the hobbits last year, Gandalf leaves them. He is set to have a long, chatty visit with Tom "the moss gatherer". No longer doomed to be "a rolling stone", Gandalf is looking forward to what he and Tom will have to say to each other. (I have to say, I would love to be a fly on that wall and hear the stories those two will tell. What questions would they answer, I wonder.)

Frodo is nostalgic to see Tom again himself but Gandalf prods the hobbits on their way lest they arrive at the gates at the Brandywine Bridge after night. The hobbits go, wondering about gates where no gates have been before and, indeed, they do arrive after dark to find them locked and barred. Even Merry's relationship to Hob Hayward, a fellow Brandybuck, was not enough to get the hobbits guarding the gates to open them. They were too afraid of "the Chief" and his Big Man. The Big Man turns out to be Bill Ferny as Merry and Pippin learn when they climb the gate. The company sends him packing with a parting shot from Bill the Pony.

There is to be no welcome home for the returning hobbits. The company takes up residence for the night in the guard shack that has replaced the inn that once stood here and, with only bits of the story gleaned from the frightened hobbit guards, settles down to sleep. But, not before breaking every rule listed on the notice that they rip from the walls. It looks to be another long day tomorrow. With no food, beer or pipeweed to be had, Sam is none to cheery about it.