[Regin Hardhammer]

At the gates of the city, Harold took a final look back at the place he had called home. He made sure it was a good look, for he knew it would be his last. When Harold was as old as his father Fordogrim, he hoped to remember the Bree that once was. One thing he could not take with him was his dear mother Primrose whose body lay under the shade of the elm in his garden. Earlier that day, he had visited her grave, although he had been very busy getting ready to leave. As the tears came, he longed to see her face one last time, but she had gone on and he was left behind.

He looked with longing out on the land. Who would tend to the tomatoes, he thought? Who would plow the fields and spread the seeds? In the grey shadows of his mind, he saw the kind land covered over, his crops flattened, everything replaced by a large flour mill.

With a heavy heart, he left the land that he had known since childhood, foresaking the soft green hills for a mysterious wilderness called the White Downs. A knot of anger swelled up in his stomach. The mild-mannered Hobbit felt something snap as he pushed back his protest. What right does anyone have to tell me to leave my home? What difference does it make to the Whitfoots where I work their land? They see the land as property, but I see it as a living thing. Every day I work and tend the land and feel its life. They do not know its blessings or have feelings for it the way I do. They watch me farm their plot and then cut me away from it with a great gardening shears!

Bitter but resigned to his fate, Harold grudgingly set off from Bree. He walked beside his pony Brandy who pulled the family's wagon. Sarah, Henry, and May were piled tightly in the cart, which was laden with all of their meager possessions. Harold had attempted to persuade the Old One to join them, but he refused, insisting to ride on his own pony. Sitting beside Sarah, two hens clucked in their cages. A pair of goats and their prize cow Buttercup trailed along behind the wagon, tied with a sturdy rope. Harold looked at several of his Fallohide neighbors, noticing their carts overflowing with many possessions. Why did they bring all that, he wondered? Yet not a single one had bothered to take a hen or a cow. How did they expect to find eggs and milk for the little lads and lasses?

Before he knew it, the party was off and riding down the road to a strange new world. The land he knew lay behind him; only shadow and uncertainty lurked ahead.