Alan Sisto

It is exactly.

I know.

I kind of hate being boring, but we got to be boring.

That's what it was.

All right.

What then happened to Gollum cannot, of course, be known for certain.

He was peculiarly fitted to survive in such straits, though at cost of great misery.

But he was in great peril of discovery by the servants of Sauron that lurked in Moria, especially since such bare necessity of food as he must have, he could only get by thieving dangerously.

No doubt he had intended to use Moria simply as a secret passage westward,

his purpose being to find Shire himself as quickly as he could.

But he became lost, and it was a very long time before he found his way about.

It thus seems probable that he had not long made his way towards the West Gate when the nine walkers arrived.

He knew nothing, of course, about the action of the doors.

To him, they would seem huge and immovable, and though they had no lock or bar and opened outwards to a thrust, he did not discover that.

In any case, he was now far away from any source of food, for the orcs were mostly in the east end of Moria and was become weak and desperate, so that even if he had known all about the doors, he still could not have thrust them open.

It was thus a piece of singular good fortune for Gollum that the nine walkers arrived when they did.

And now we get Christopher's commentary.

The story of the coming of the Black Riders to Isengard in September 3018, and their subsequent capture of Grima Wormtongue, as told in A and B, is much altered in Version C, which takes up the narrative only at their return southward over the Limlight.

In A and B, it was two days after Gandalf's escape from Orthanc that the Nazgul came to Isengard.

Saruman told them that Gandalf was gone and denied all knowledge of the Shire, but was betrayed by Grima, whom they captured on the following day as he hastened to Isengard with news of Gandalf's coming to Edoras.