The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Noble Life, by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

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Title: A Noble Life

Author: Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

Release Date: December 17, 2004 [eBook #14373]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A NOBLE LIFE***

E-text prepared by Robin Eugene Escovado

A NOBLE LIFE

by

DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK

Author of _John Halifax, Gentleman_, _Christian's Mistake_,
&c., &c., &c.

New York
Harper & Brothers, Publishers
Franklin Square

Dedicated, with the affection of eighteen years,
To Uncle George

Chapter 1

Many years ago, how many need not be recorded, there lived in his
ancestral castle, in the far north of Scotland, the last Earl of
Cairnforth.

You will not find his name in "Lodge's Peerage," for, as I say, he was
the last earl, and with him the title became extinct. It had been borne
for centuries by many noble and gallant men, who had lived worthily or
died bravely. But I think among what we call "heroic" lives--lives
the story of which touches us with something higher than pity, and
deeper than love--there never was any of his race who left behind a
history more truly heroic than he.

Now that it is all over and done--now that the soul so mysteriously
given has gone back unto Him who gave it, and a little green turf in the
kirk-yard behind Cairnforth Manse covers the poor body in which it dwelt
for more than forty years, I feel it might do good to many, and would do
harm to none, if I related the story--a very simple one, and more
like a biography than a tale--of Charles Edward Stuart Montgomerie,
last Earl of Cairnforth.

He did not succeed to the title; he was born Earl of Cairnforth, his
father having been drowned in the loch a month before, the wretched
countess herself beholding the sight from her castle windows. She lived
but to know she had a son and heir--to whom she desired might be
given his father's name: then she died--more glad than sorry to
depart, for she had loved her husband all her life, and had only been
married to him a year. Perhaps, had she once seen her son, she might
have wished less to die than