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And an awful villain too! A man I met in Australia knew Gordon well. But he tells a curious tale, though. He was a doctor, that Gordon; had come last from somewhere in Kirkcudbrightshire." "He did," said Thomas Carr, quietly. "What curious tale does your friend tell?"
Idle, visionary, loose in conduct, good-natured, fond of roving. Surgeon wouldn't keep him as assistant; might have done it, he says, had G.G. been of settled disposition: saw him in drink three times. Next turns up in Scotland, assistant to a doctor there; name Mair, locality Kirkcudbrightshire. Remained less than a year; left, saying was going to Australia.
In 1809, a farmer of Kirkcudbrightshire set to work to demolish a large cairn that interfered with his tilling of the soil, and which, according to popular tradition, was the tomb of a Scotch king. In taking away the earth the workmen found a large stone coffin, in which lay the skeleton of a man of great stature.
He thus escaped one danger, however, only to fall into another, and in a storm off the coast of Newfoundland the Reprisal went down, and all on board were lost. But of all the naval commanders on the American side, the Scotsman, John Paul Jones, was the most famous. He was the son of a gardener, and was born at Arbigland in Kirkcudbrightshire.
In Kirkcudbrightshire, one night about Hallowe'en two young ploughmen, returning from an errand, passed by an old ruined mill and heard within music and dancing. One of them went in; and nothing was seen of him again until a year after, when his companion went to the same place, Bible in hand, and delivered him from the evil beings into whose power he had fallen.
And it is almost equally hard to believe that Paul Jones, who commanded one of the first American war vessels, and became the greatest naval hero that this country has ever known, was the son of a poor, Scotch gardener, who worked for a country squire in Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland. In 1747 Paul Jones was born, but his name was then John Paul.
But a changeling was to be known in other ways than by his physical defects; under careful management he might be led to betray himself in speech or action. A Kirkcudbrightshire tale represents a child as once left in charge of a tailor, who "commenced a discourse" with him. "'Will, hae ye your pipes? says the tailor. 'They're below my head, says the tenant of the cradle.
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