I'm having mixed emotions here, but I'm delighted to find out the real story behind the picture. Now I'm dying to know more!
Now I understand that the elf, Beleg is carrying a sword (Anglachel) and I never could figure out why "Pippin" had a sword after being abducted...oh, it's getting so clear!
J. R. R. Tolkien stated in a letter of 1937 that the picture of Mirkwood for The Hobbit was itself redrawn from a painting made earlier to illustrate the passage in The Silmarillion (Chapter 21) where Beleg finds Gwindor in the forest of Taur-nu-Fuin. That painting is beyond question the one reproduced here, despite the title 'Fangorn Forest'. In view of the title the two figures would naturally be taken to be the hobbits Pippin and Merry, straying in Fangorn before their encounter with Treebeard (The Two Towers, Book III, Chapter 4). It is clear, however, that this is not so; the figures are elves and not hobbits; and the elf climbing over the tree-roots is Beleg Strongbow of Doriath, bearing his great sword Anglachel (which was afterwards reforged for Tu'rin and from which he became known as the Black Sword of Nargothrond). The other is Gwindor of Nargothrond, lying exhausted after his escape from the mines of Angband, with his lamp beside him.
Checked Yahoo, and they have LOTR at least through next Thursday--are we on (tentatively) for Tuesday the 16th?