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MAJOR MOLINEUX
573
I know an Indian when I see one.
ROBIN
This is no time to trust your eyes.
Boy
What were they saying about a party?
Is our kinsman entertaining
the town?
ROBIN
Riddles. It's nothing, Brother.
There's no party-just deviltry!
Only devils joke about
Indians. Indians brained a child
against a hearthstone once in Deerlield.
That child was your uncle, Brother.
Indians raped your uncle's mother,
and sold her to a half-breed Frenchman.
We're lost without the British army.
Boy
Perhaps it's only Halloween.
ROBIN
It's murder. We must find the Major.
(The church lights up a little.
ROBIN
walks over to it, and looks in a
window.)
Our church is empty, Brother. Moonbeams
are trembling on the snow-pure pews,
the altar's drowned in radiant fog,
a single restless ray has crept
across the open Bible.
(Turns to a gravestone by the church)
I'm lonely.
What's this? A gravestone? A grave? Whose grave?
I think the Major must have died;
everything tells me he
is
gone
and nothing
is
forever.
(Turns back to the church)
Brother,
the moon's the only worshipper!
(The
CLERGYMAN
comes out of the church. He lays a white clay
pipe on the steps and holds up a little colored celluloid whirligig.)