Every night the wolf was heard roaring somewhere, and next morning the bones of children or sheep were found on the highways, picked as clean as ivory. Superstition increased the terrors of the people, who averred that it was visible in many places at once. It was said by some to be red, by others to be black; some declared that its mouth was like that of a hound, others like that of the great cannon, Meg of Threive, or, as it is erroneously named, Mons Meg. It had the claws of an eagle, by one account; a barbed tail, by another; it vomited fire; it was a griffin; the devil--everything frightful that folly and fear could make it. The best and bravest huntsmen had failed to slay or capture it; the sharpest spears had been blunted on its side, which the hereditary forester declared to be like a coat of mail; the fleetest dogs had been outrun by it, and the fiercest torn by its fangs when brought to bay; even Bash and Bawtry, the two great hounds of James V., on which Sir David of the Mount made many a witty rhyme, failed with this terrible wolf; and the unhappy Fifers were reduced to the verge of despair. 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.