Elated by this success, and deeming the town an easy prey, the English marched joyously to occupy it. But behold! the women had closed the gates and barriers, mounted the battlements, and were ready to defend themselves against all comers. Their men might be foolish enough to fall into the enemy’s snares, but they would look after their homes. Sir Thomas, like the gallant Englishman he was, refused to make the attack. “See these good women,” he said, “standing like wolf-dogs on their walls. Let us turn back, and God grant our English wives to be as brave in battle.” The ludicrous side of female belligerency has seldom been lacking in history. It is admirably illustrated by the story, at once absurd and tragic, of the unfortunate William Scott of Harden, whose wife, an aggressively pious woman, insisted on attending the forbidden meetings of the Covenanters. Scott was called before the Council, and told to keep his lady at home. He answered, frankly and sadly, that he could not. The Council, arguing after the fashion of the Queen in “Alice in Wonderland,” insisted that if he had a wife he could oblige her to obey him, and dismissed him with a serious warning. Off to the Eildon Hills went Madam Scott, and prayed as hard as ever. Her husband received a second summons from the Council, and was fined a thousand pounds for her obstinate recusancy. Madam Scott, who now occupied the proud yet comfortable position of a martyr for the faith whose sufferings were borne vicariously by another, clung more insistently than before to her religious rights. Scott was fined another thousand pounds. Madam Scott merely denounced the persecutors of the righteous with redoubled vehemence at the next gathering of the elect. The luckless man was then actually imprisoned in the Bass Fortress, where he remained three years, while his triumphant spouse, secure from molestation, trod her saintly path, and prayed whenever and wherever she desired. The revolting wife is not invariably a thing of beauty, but it is hard to see how she could carry her spirit of independence any farther.