In about 1732, Robin, a youth, arrives by ferry in Boston seeking his kinsman, Major Molineux, an official in the British Colonial government, who has promised him work. Yet no one in town tells him where the major is. A rich man threatens the youth with prison, and an innkeeper calls him a runaway bond-servant. At the inn, he meets a man with a face described as looking like the devil - two protrusions emanating from his forehead (like horns), eyes burning like 'fire in a cave'- who seems at the center of many evil things...