Part 28 (1/2)

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 pa.s.sed 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.

Taking his revolver and such of his remaining food as he could conveniently carry, he accordingly crept out of his hiding-place soon after nightfall and made his way to the southeastward, following the country roads and keeping his direction by the stars. About six o'clock the next morning he arrived on the river bank opposite Boonville. Making inquiries of a negro, he found that the town was in possession of Union troops, and he soon crossed the river on the ferry. To his surprise and delight, the paroled garrison of Glasgow was just coming into town when he arrived, Wallace among them. They were loud in their praises of the kind treatment they had received at the hands of their captors, and especially of the escort under Lieutenant Graves, which had brought them down to the near vicinity of Boonville; for the Confederate soldiers had shared their rations with the prisoners and made their march as comfortable as possible in every way.

At Boonville the paroled men separated to await exchange; and Al and Wallace continued their journey together, going down to Jefferson City in an army wagon and thence by the Pacific Railroad to St. Louis, where they arrived safe during the second morning after leaving Boonville.

”Wallace,” said Al, when they stepped from the train at the station and walked out into the street, where drays and omnibuses were rattling over the cobble stones and busy throngs of people covered the sidewalks, ”the first thing we do must be to find an ice-cream parlor. We won't go to Third and Olive; that's too far from here. But I want to drink that lemonade with you. I allowed ten days, you remember, but now it is only,--let me see,--five days. Then you will go out to Palm Street with me and see how a surprise affects my mother and Annie and--” he hesitated, then added, hopefully, ”Tommy.”

The refres.h.i.+ng drink was pleasant but they fairly gulped it down, for Al, now that at last he had reached his journey's end, was feverishly eager to see his dear ones once more. So they hastened to Fifth Street and boarded a north-bound horse car, which soon carried them to Palm Street, though to Al in his impatience the journey seemed hours long. As they came in sight of the house, Al saw his mother in the front yard, transplanting some flowers from a bed to pots. Her back was toward the street and the boys approached within a few feet without her hearing them. Then Al took off his hat and stepped up behind her.

”Excuse me, madam,” said he, gravely, ”but is this where Mrs. Thomas Briscoe lives?”

His mother turned and gave one startled glance at the brown-faced youth before her, in his rough, travel-stained clothes, then dropped her case-knife and flower pot on the ground, crying, in a voice thrilling with joy,

”Al, Al! My dear, dear boy!”

The next instant she was in his arms and both of them were laughing and crying at once. As soon as the first warm greeting was over, Al asked fearfully,

”Mother, have you seen or heard anything of Tommy?”

He need not have asked the question, for at this juncture a straight, boyish figure bounded through the front doorway, cleared the steps in one jump and sprang into Al's arms.

”What, Tommy?” cried Al, in amazed delight. ”Can it possibly be you, so big and strong? I would not have known you. How and when did you get here?”

”They sent me down on another boat after the _North Wind_ burned,” Tommy answered.