"Oh, everything is torn to pieces!" she groaned, as she handed these things to Al. "I don't know how I shall ever repair it, all alone, as I am." Then she continued, "You can see to eat by this candle and then you had better put it out, in case any one should look down the cellar stairs. Then, if you want to sleep, I will keep watch; and after dark I will waken you, and you can go to an old cave I know of, in a clump of bushes not far back of the house." "Yes, I know the cave," said Al. "It's the very place. Your son Frank and 'Chucky' Collins and I made that cave. We used to have a pirates' den there." He smiled up at her as he bit into a pink slice of cold ham, the first he had tasted in months. "Oh, did you, Al?" asked Mrs. Falkner in a low voice. She was silent a moment, then went on, slowly, "The Collins boy is in the rebel army. Frank--Frank--was killed at Prairie Grove." Her voice broke. The smile vanished from Al's face. "Oh, Mrs. Falkner!" he exclaimed. "How sorry I am. Poor old Frank! And your husband--Doctor Falkner?" "Is a surgeon in Sherman's army," she said. "So long as he is left to me I should be thankful, for I am only one of thousands who have lost sons or husbands in our Nation's cause. What of your own parents, Al?" Then he told her of his father's death and Tommy's capture and of his mother and Annie in St. Louis. For some time they talked, then Mrs. Falkner returned upstairs, while Al lay down behind the pile of boxes and was at once wrapped in the profound slumber of exhaustion. No one disturbed the lonely house during the remaining hours of the day nor the early ones of the following night, for most of the Confederate army was farther uptown or in bivouac outside its limits. Sometime toward morning Mrs. Falkner awakened Al and conducted him cautiously to the cave, leaving him there with an ample supply of food for several days. The next day and night passed and Al still lay in his cramped refuge, undisturbed, but very stiff and uncomfortable and eager to get out and away. During the second day Mrs. Falkner came to the cave and dropped a note down to him through a crack in the roof. In it she informed him that Colonel Harding and his command had been paroled the day before and marched away toward Jefferson City accompanied by an escort, to be delivered within the Union lines, wherever these might be met with. The last of the Confederate troops, she wrote, had just left, crossing the Missouri on steamboats and marching away westward, to join General Price's main army. The town was still quiet, but every one feared that gangs of guerillas would soon swoop down upon it; and she advised Al to make his escape as soon as darkness came.