'I must get up and have my breakfast.'

So he rose and dressed himself, and went into the kitchen, where
he got his pot of porridge; he swallowed all of this, and then
asked what work he was to have.

He was to thresh that day, said the squire; the other twelve men
were already busy at it. There were twelve threshing-floors, and
the twelve men were at work on six of them--two on each. Hans
must thresh by himself all that was lying upon the other six
floors. He went out to the barn and got hold of a flail. Then
he looked to see how the others did it and did the same, but at
hte first stroke he smashed the flail in pieces. There were
several flails hanging there, and Hans took the one after the
other, but they all went the same way, every one flying in
splinters at the first stroke. He then looked round for
something else to work with, and found a pair of strong beams
lying near. Next he caught sight of a horse-hide nailed up on
the barn-door. With the beams he made a flail, using the skin to
tie them together. The one beam he used as a handle, and the
other to strike with, and now that was all right. But the barn
was too low, there was no room to swing the flail, and the floors
were too small. Hans, however, found a remedy for this--he
simply lifted the whole roof off the barn, and set it down in the
field beside. He then emptied down all the corn that he could
lay his hands on and threshed away. He went through one lot
after another, and it was ll the same to him what he got hold of,
so before midday he had threshed all the squire's grain, his rye
and wheat and barley and oats, all mixed through each other.
When he was finished with this, he lifted the roof up on the barn