Trotter

Finally, at long last we meet Strider. One of the key players in The Lord of the Rings. Lord of the Dunedain, Heir of Númenor, King of Gondor. A leader of men, a courageous warrior, a humble servant, complete with healing hands. For many Aragorn represents the best in men and is a favored character of Tolkien's. But the first iteration of this character, known as Trotter, had some remarkable differences.

"Suddenly Bingo noticed that a queer-looking, brown-faced hobbit, sitting in the shadows behind the others, was also listening intently. He had an enormous mug (more like a jug) in front of him, and was smoking a broken-stemmed pipe right under his rather long nose. He was dressed in dark rough brown cloth, and had a hood on, in spite of the warmth, - and very remarkably, he have wooden shoes!" (p. 137, The Return of the Shadow).

Very interesting that this character is a hobbit! It seems counter intuitive, if one knows anything about hobbits, that one of them would be one of the wild folk--rangers. But there it is. Mystery still surrounds Trotter at this point (he got his name from the clitter-clap of his wooden shoes): why is he interested in the traveling hobbits? How does he seem to know too much about Bingo and his purpose? Why does he have wooden shoes? How does a simplistic hobbit become a wild ranger?