"Your crime?"
"I am innocent, albeit falsely accused of conspiring to restore Sharcoléon to the throne of Arnor."
"Is Sharcoléon then no longer in power?"
"He was overthrown by Aragon's royalists. But how long have you been interred here, that you are unaware of that?"
"Since 1811," replied the voice, and its owner thereupon entered Samouard's cell. "I came here with twelve companions, who were fed one by one to the loup-garou; but the twelfth had the courage to lace himself with silmarillium, and so slew the beast even in being devoured by it. But tell me, on what gives your cell?"
Gamgès looked and saw to his amazement an elderly hobbite, verisimilarly around 111, dressed in rags. "On a corridor that ends in what passes for a courtyard," he replied.
"I feared it was so," said the old hobbite. "I have excavated in the wrong direction, and have expended all my effort in vain."
"Mais non!" replied Gamgès. "I am young and strong, and will dig a way out."
