happy existence. Some two years after her marriage, Fanny
Stephenson died, as yet a mere girl, leaving her lonely husband to
take care of their baby boy alone and unaided. Grief for this
irretrievable loss drove the young widower away for a while from
his accustomed field of work among the Tyneside coal-pits; he
accepted an invitation to go to Montrose in Scotland, to overlook
the working of a large engine in some important spinning-works. He
remained in this situation for one year only; but during that time
he managed to give clear evidence of his native mechanical insight
by curing a defect in the pumps which supplied water to his engine,
and which had hitherto defied the best endeavours of the local
engineers. The young father was not unmindful, either, of his duty
to his boy, whom he had left behind with his grandfather on
Tyneside; for he saved so large a sum as 28 pounds during his
engagement, which he carried back with him in his pocket on his
return to England.

A sad disappointment awaited him when at last he arrived at home.
Old Robert Stephenson, the father, had met with an accident during
George's absence which made him quite blind, and incapacitated him
for further work. Helpless and poor, he had no resource to save
him from the workhouse except George; but George acted towards him
exactly as all men who have in them a possibility of any good thing
always do act under similar circumstances. He spent 15 pounds of
his hard-earned savings to pay the debts the poor blind old engine-
man had necessarily contracted during his absence, and he took a
comfortable cottage for his father and mother at Killingworth,
where he had worked before his removal to Scotland, and where he
now once more obtained employment, still as a brakesman. In that
cottage this good and brave son supported his aged parents till