A Drowned Maiden's Hair

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                   As far as eye could see.

The rolling mist came down and hid the land:

                   And never home came she.

“O is it weed, or fish, or floating hair —

                   A tress of golden hair,

                   A drownèd maiden’s hair

                   Above the nets at sea?”

Was never salmon yet that shone so fair

                   Among the stakes of Dee.

They row’d her in across the rolling foam,

                   The cruel crawling foam,

                   The cruel hungry foam,

                   To her grave beside the sea.

But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home,

                   Across the sands of Dee.

On the morning of the best day of her life, Maud Flynn was locked in the outhouse, singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

She was locked in because she was being punished. The Barbary Asylum for Female Orphans was overcrowded; every room in the wide brick building was in use. There were few places where one could imprison a child who had misbehaved. The outhouse was one such place, and very suitable for the purpose, because the children hated it. Though the janitor scrubbed it clean every day, it stank; the single window was high and narrow and let in just enough light to show that there were spiders. Maud boasted that she was not afraid of spiders, but she was no happier than anyone else when she sat on the high bench, feet dangling, and wondered whether any of the itches she felt were spiders creeping over her skin.

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