In the days of King James II. (A.D. 1547), a law ordained that for the destruction of wolves the sheriffs of counties and bailies of towns and regalities were empowered to convene the men of their districts thrice yearly, "betwixt St. Mark's day and Lambmass, for that (saith the act) is the time of the quhelpes;" and every huntsman who slew a wolf was to receive from each parishioner one penny; and whoever brought the wolf's head to the sheriff, lord, baron, or bailie, should receive six pennies.
Conformably to this law, passed eighty years before, and led in person by the gallant king (who was compelled for one day to leave his Magdalene's couch of sickness and of suffering), the whole male population of Fife, with horse and hound, spear and horn, bow and arquebuse, had made a vengeful and simultaneous search by hill and howe, by wood and wold, for this obnoxious denizen; but their efforts proved perfectly futile; and the night descended upon a hundred hunting bands without their having had even a glimpse of the enemy—at least so far as was known of those around the burgh of Kinghorn, where the earl had landed about noon that day; for an adverse wind had long detained the little sloop which plied at that ancient ferry.
On disembarking, he repaired to an hostel house, which bore the sign of The King's Horn, for an old tradition asserts that as the earlier Scottish monarchs had a castle there, the frequent winding of the king's horn, as he sallied out to the chase, had given a name to the little town that nestled on the shore; but the cean-gorm, or blue promontory of the Celtic Scots, still frowns above it, to contradict the tale. Then, as now, Kinghorn was a steep and straggling burgh of strange and quaint old houses, piled over each other, pell-mell, on the brow of a hill, and was traversed by a brawling mountain burn, that turned the wooden wheel of many an ancient mill. It is overlooked by the lofty and rugged precipice, from, the summit of which Alexander III., when riding from Inverkeithing to his castle of Kinghorn, having mistaken his path in the forest, fell and broke his neck; a catastrophe which ended the old line of the Macalpine kings, and began the long wars and woes of the Scottish succession.
After a slight repast of cheese, bran-bannocks, and a draught of mum-beer, at the hostel, the earl became alarmed on discovering a proclamation, descriptive of his person, pasted on the wall immediately above his head. The unfortunate noble became still more apprehensive of suspicion or discovery, as the thirty huntsmen who filled the burrow-toun came crowding into the hostel, and on perceiving that two or three were beginning to whisper and observe him, for his whole aspect was wild, haggard, and disordered; he resolved, if questioned, to pass for a forester like themselves, and, if attacked, to sell his life as dearly as possible.
Appropriating to himself a stout hunting-spear which stood in a corner of the kitchen, he bade adieu to the sign of The King's Horn, and, quitting the town, struck into the old horseway that traversed the heights overhanging the coast.
The sun was now setting.
Remembering how suspiciously he had been eyed in the little hostelry, he grasped the hunting-spear, looked warily about him, and walked quietly to the eastward, anxious to leave Kinghorn as far as possible behind him.
The sun set darkly and lowering as he progressed, and the last flush of its light fell with a dusky yellow upon the long expanse of Kirkaldy sands, and the gigantic castle of Ravenscraig, with its round and square towers—a stronghold of the Sinclairs—which terminated them.
"I have neither money, food, nor shelter," thought the earl; "but, praised be fortune, I am at least free!"
The wind growled along the hollows; the Firth grew black as ink, and its waves rolled white and frothy upon the circular sands, where more than one small vessel had dropped all her anchors, and made everything secure aloft and below, to brave the coming tempest. That vague and indescribable murmur, the sure forerunner of a rising storm, was floating over the dark-green bosom of the German Sea, and he heard it mingling with the hiss of the breakers. A tempestuous night was at hand, and the hapless earl knew not where to look for refuge; the castle of Kirkaldy-grange, the dwelling of the lord high treasurer, crowned an eminence on his left; the fortlet of Seafield, where dwelt the hostile race of Moultray (hostile, at least, to him), overlooked the beach on his right; so avoiding both, and the little fane called Eglise Marie, which then occupied the hollow between them, he descended the wild and then uncultivated shore, and skirting the long straggling town of Kirkaldy, hoped to find a shelter in one of those innumerable caverns with which, in many places, the coast of Fife is completely perforated.