once on a time there was a poor couple who had a son whose name was halvor. ever since he was a little boy he would turn his hand to nothing, but just sat there and groped about in the ashes. his father and mother often put him out to learn this trade or that, but halvor could stay nowhere; for, when he had been there a day or two, he ran away from his master, and never stopped till he was sitting again in the ingle, poking about in the cinders.