LotR -- Book 1 - Chapter 04 – A Short Cut to Mushrooms

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Thinlómien

Fourteen, you say? Frodo, Sam & Pippin + Mr & Mrs Maggot + three daughters + two sons + one farmhand + three dogs. Makes sense, doesn't it?

No, it doesn't. Unless there were six dogs (or five, for that matter). Skipping the eventually discutable thing about dogs sitting down to eat, there are other things the dogs are doing by the time others sit:

In a short while fourteen sat down to eat. (...) The dogs lay by the fire and gnawed rinds and cracked bones.

Originally Posted by Lommy

While other posters on this thread have mainly considered it a humorous chapter, I must say I think it is partly one of the scariest in the book.

Originally Posted by Lommy

Also, the episode of Merry The Black Rider is very scary. I remember when my father read LotR aloud to me and my little sister when we were about 6 and 4 years old and that passage was simply [I]horror[/I.

Well, if you were 6 by that time, no wonder you considered it a horror and the chapter remained in your memory as that. I don't recall what feeling I had about this one, but I think the relief came probably too early for the mysterious rider to make any stronger impression on me. And concerning the other things, I never felt it scary - like I said about the previous chapter, the hobbits were still in the Shire, the Riders were something riding here and there in the woods and I did not know what deadly thing they actually are. Weathertop, now that was horror! But about that later, in due time.