When Jón’s box was stuffed to the lid and would hold no more, he rode back to Egilsstaðir to see about selling it. Certain he was about to become a rich man, Jón set up a tent in the town square and held a nighttime demonstration to show what his boxed daylight could do. Hundreds of curious townspeople gathered to watch.

The demonstration did not go well. First, Jón tried to show how the contents of his mysterious black box could be used to light very small spaces, like an outhouse.

“Imagine the call of nature wakes you in the night,” he explained to the crowd. “You’re half asleep and trying to light a lamp-flame in pitch darkness just so you can stumble outside and use the commode. It’s dangerous! But with my boxed light, you won’t need a lamp anymore—you can keep your outhouse lit round the clock!”

He’d brought a small, wooden outhouse into the tent, and now he pinched a little daylight from his box, tossed it inside, and shut the door. For a few seconds the outhouse shone brilliantly, shafts of light radiating through the cracks and seams in its frame, and the audience oohed and applauded. But they began to laugh as, moments later, all the light leaked from the outhouse, leaving the commode dark. Meanwhile, a luminous balloon of daylight rose through the air to become trapped in a distant fold of the tent ceiling, where it glowed uselessly, high out of reach. In an attempt to make his accident look intentional, Jón tried to brighten the whole tent by tossing handfuls of light into corners, but in his hurry he tripped and spilled half the contents of his box. The light that escaped was so concentrated that it rendered several people temporarily blind. Pandemonium erupted, the crowd ran screaming for the exits, and the tent went up in flames. As if that weren’t disastrous enough, the daylight then escaped into the general atmosphere and lit the night sky bright as day. It stayed like that for an entire week, during which time the people of Egilsstaðir developed insomnia and slept not a wink.

Needless to say, there was no demand for Jón’s boxed daylight. The townspeople wished only to be rid of it—and him—and Jón was told in no uncertain terms that it was time for him to leave Egilsstaðir. He rode away in shame, sorely disappointed.

Jón Jónsson drifted about the countryside, taking work where he could find it. He nearly forgot about his box of daylight, which he’d tied shut with string and stashed at the bottom of his knapsack. One day he was tarring boats in Húsavík when Tyr popped out from behind a pile of fishing nets.

“How’s it going with the box?” Tyr asked. “Got any money for me?”

“Not a farthing,” Jón grumbled. “The box is useless. You can have it back.”

“Keep it,” Tyr said. “You may find a use for it yet.”

“I doubt that,” Jón said, and he put down his tarring brush to reach for the box. By the time he’d pulled it from his knapsack, though, Tyr was gone.