While thus speaking, the little man had produced a second pipe of alabaster glass, filled it with crushed pine cones, and lighted it by holding a large burning-glass in the sun. When he had done this, he shook Peter's hand in a friendly manner, accompanied him a short distance on his way, giving him some valuable advice, meanwhile blowing out thicker and thicker volumes of smoke, and finally disappearing in a cloud of smoke, that, as if from genuine Dutch tobacco, curled slowly about the tops of the pine trees. When Peter arrived at home, he found his mother in a state of great alarm about him, for the good woman could believe nothing else but that her son had been drawn as a soldier. He, however, was in a very happy mood, and told her how he had met a good friend in the forest, who had advanced him money to undertake a better business than that of charcoal burning. Although his mother had lived in this hut for thirty years, and was as much accustomed to the sight of sooty faces as every miller's wife is to the flour on her husband's face, yet she was vain enough when Peter held out the prospect of a more brilliant life, to despise her early condition, and said: "Yes, as mother of a man who owns the glassworks, I am somewhat better than neighbor Grete and Bete, and for the future I shall take a front seat in the church among respectable people." Peter soon concluded a bargain with the heirs for the glass-works. He retained the workmen whom he found there, and made glass by day and night. In the beginning he was much pleased with the business. He was accustomed to walk proudly about the works, with his hands in his pockets, looking into this and that, advising here and there, over which his workmen laughed not a little; but his great delight was to see the glass blown, and he often attempted this work himself, forming the most singular shapes out of the molten mass. But before long he tired of the business, and spent only an hour a day at the works; then only an hour in two days, and finally he went only once a week, so that his workmen did what they pleased.