Posted: July 24, 2000 at 05:42:14: by Bacchus
: A question that has me stumped:
: In Crickhollow, Merry surprises Frodo by revealing how much "the conspirators" know about the Ring and Frodo's plans. He points to Sam as being their master spy until he got caught, after which "he seemed to regard himself as on probation."
: But when Gandalf tells Frodo the secret of the Ring, Sam is caught at the end of the conversation. Up until then Frodo only knows Bilbo's story, and has no plan of leaving the Shire.
: So when did Sam spy, and what information could he have given?The best that I can come up with is that Sam shared the information that he had gathered up to the time that he was caught,(INCLUDING the big conversation), and then spied no more. This is a little ethically slippery, because it requires him to pass a report after he had been caught, but is the only way that I can make the statements match up, however imperfectly.
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