"No," admitted the Congressman, "and Barry, that's the worst of our faults. They leave marks that are sometimes never entirely eliminated by time. My father tried to illustrate the fact for me when I was a boy. He had a fine piece of walnut that he intended to utilize in making a piece of furniture. It was smoothly planed and polished. One rainy day, with the destructiveness of youth, I hammered it full of nails. I was not a vicious boy, but I knew that I was doing wrong."
"What did he say?" asked Barry eagerly.
"He was very much grieved, but instead of thrashing me, as I expected, he made me pull the nails out one by one. After that he gave me a plane and bade me smooth the board off as best I could. Finally I was told to putty up the holes. After that he asked me if I thought the board was as good as it had been before I disfigured it."
"Of course, it wasn't," commented Barry.
"No, it was not. The marks of the nails were still there. And he used the fact to convey a moral lesson. He told me the same thing happened every time a boy was guilty of a fault or a sin,—he damaged his character to that extent. The inference is plain. While we must do our best to repair the wrongs we do, we cannot forget that the scars still remain."
If Mr. Carlton and Barry imagined that the incident of the missing bill was closed, they were doomed to disappointment. While they were still talking, the door opened and Felix Conway came in, his forehead wrinkled with indignation. The Congressman, who was a self-contained man, could not help smiling.
"What's the matter now?"
"Matter enough," retorted the correspondent, "Hudson's playing peanut politics."
"It's the only kind he knows," was the placid retort.