Then the young statesman proposed:  “If you are going with Harry, I’ll go along and see what they’ve done on the Illinois and Michigan Canal.  Some contractors who worked on the Erie Canal will start from Chicago Monday to look the ground over and bid on the construction of the southern end of it.  I want to talk with them when they come along down the line.”

“I guess a few days in the saddle would do you good,” said Samson.

“I reckon it would.  I’ve been cloyed on house air and oratory and future greatness.  The prairie wind and your pessimism will straighten me up.”

Harry rode to the village that afternoon to get “Colonel” and Mrs. Lukins to come out to the farm and stay with Sarah while he and Samson were away.  Harry found the “Colonel” sitting comfortably in a chair by the door of his cabin, roaring with laughter.  He had not lived up to his title and was still generally known as “Bony” Lukins.

“What are you roaring at?” Harry demanded.

The “Colonel” was dumb with joy for a moment.  Then, with an effort, he straightened his face and managed to say:  “Laughin’ just ’cause I’m alive.”  The words were followed by a kind of spiritual explosion followed by a silent ague of merriment.  It would seem that his brain had discovered in the human comedy some subtle and persuasive jest which had gone over the heads of the crowd.  Yet Harry seemed to catch it, for he, too, began to laugh with the fortunate “Colonel.”

“You see,” said the latter, as, with great difficulty, he restrained himself for half a moment, “this is my busy day.”

Again he roared and shook in a fit of ungovernable mirth.  In the midst of it Mrs. Lukins arrived.

“Don’t pay no ’tention to him,” she said.  “The ‘Colonel’ is wearin’ himself out restin’.  He’s kep’ his head bobbin’ all day like a woodpecker’s.  Jest laughs till he’s sick every time he an’ ol’ John gits together.  It’s plum ridic’lous.”

The “Colonel” turned serious long enough to give him time to explain in a quivering, joyous tone:  “0l’ John, he just sets beside me and says the gol’ darndest funniest things!”

He could get no further.  His last words were blown out in a gale of laughter.  Mrs. Lukins had sat down with her knitting.

“Ol’ John Barleycorn will leave to-night, an’ to-morrow the ‘Colonel’ will be the soberest critter in Illinois—­kind o’ lonesome like an’ blubberin’ to himself,” she explained.  The faithful soul added in a whisper of confidence:  “He’s a good man.  There don’t nobody know how deep an’ kind o’ coralapus like he is.”

She now paused as if to count stitches.  For a long time the word “coralapus” had been a prized possession of Mrs. Lukins.  Like her feathered bonnet, it was used only on special occasions by way of putting her best foot forward.  It was indeed a family ornament of the same general character as her husband’s title.  Just how she came by it nobody could tell, but of its general significance,