The second man was the tallest and thinnest man in the whole Forest and was nicknamed the Long-legged Lounger, and Peter Munk envied him his extraordinary impudence, for he would flatly contradict the most important personages, and no matter how crowded the inn might be he would take up four times as much room as the fattest men; he would plant his elbows on the table, or stretch his long legs upon a bench, and no one ventured to expostulate, because he was so immensely rich. The third man, however, was young and handsome, and was the best dancer in the district, so that he was known far and wide as the King of the Dancers. He had at one time been very poor and acted as servant to one of the timber merchants, but suddenly he had become enormously rich. Some said he had found a pot of gold, others affirmed he had fished up a parcel of gold pieces from the bottom of the river, which had been part of the lost Nibelungen treasure; but, no matter how he had attained it, the fact remained that he had suddenly become very rich indeed and was looked upon as little short of a prince by his less lucky friends and companions. Peter Munk’s mind was often occupied by the good fortune of these three men, as he sat alone in the forest or by his fire! It is true that all three of them were hated by their neighbours on account of their unnatural avarice and their want of feeling for those who owed them money, or for the poor, but though they were hated they were treated with respect on account of their money, for they could afford to scatter it about as the pine-trees scattered their needles. “Alas!” sighed Peter one day, “I can stand my poverty no longer; would that I were as rich and respected as Fat Ezekiel, or as impudent and powerful as the Long-legged Lounger, or as fine a dancer as the Dance King and be able to throw florins to the fiddlers instead of pence. Where _do_ these fellows get their money from?” In thinking of ways and means by which he might amass money, he at length remembered the stories the people used to tell of the little Glass-man and Dutch Michael. In his father’s lifetime they had frequently been visited by folks as poor as themselves, and the conversation would turn to rich folks and how they had acquired their money, and the little Glass-man had not infrequently played a prominent part in the conversation. He even thought he could remember the little verse it was necessary to recite in the Forest if one wished to summon the little man; it began: Owner of all in the pine woods green, Many a hundred years thou hast seen, Thine all the land where the pine-trees grow-- But there he stopped short, and strive as he would he could not remember the rest of the verse.