e young man, who was the
best dancer far and wide, and had, therefore, received the title of
King of the Ball. He had been a poor boy, and had been a servant to one
of the lumber dealers, when he suddenly became very rich. Some said
that he had found a pot of gold under an old pine tree, others asserted
that he had fished up a packet of gold pieces near Bingen on the Rhine,
with the pole with which the raftsmen sometimes speared for fish; and
that the packet was part of the great Nibelungen treasure that lies
buried there. In short, he had suddenly become a rich man, and was
looked upon by young and old with the respect due a prince. Charcoal
Pete often thought of these three men, as he sat so lonely in the
forest of pines. It is true that all three had a common failing that
made them hated by the people; this was their inhuman avarice--their
utter lack of sympathy for the poor and unfortunate; for the
inhabitants of the Black Forest are a kind-hearted people. But you know
how it goes in the world; if they were hated on account of their
avarice, they yet commanded deference by virtue of their money; for who
but they could throw away thalers as if one had only to shake them down
from the pines?

[Illustration]

"I won't stand this much longer," said Peter, dejectedly, to himself
one day; for the day before had been a holiday, and all the people had
been down to the inn. "If I don't make a strike pretty soon, I shall
make away with myself. Oh, if I were only as rich and respectable as
the Stout Ezekiel, or so bold and mighty as the Slim Schlurker, or as
famous and as well able to throw thalers to the fiddlers as the King of
the Ball! Where can the fellow get his money?" He thought over all the
ways by which one could make money, but none of them suited him.
Finally there occurred to him the traditions of people who had become
rich through the aid of Dutch Michel and the Little Glass-Man. During
his father's life-time, other poor people often came to visit them, and
Peter had heard them talk by the hour of rich people and of the way
their riches were acquired. The name of the Little Glass-Man was often
mentioned in these conversations, as one who had helped these rich men
to their wealth; and Peter could almost remember the verse that had to
be spoken at the Tannenbuehl in the centre of the forest in order to
summon him. It ran thus:

"Schatzhauser im gruenen Tannenwald,
Bis schon viel' hundert J