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 their death, in all the simple luxury that his small means
would then permit him.

That, however, was not the end of George's misfortunes. Shortly after,
he was drawn by lot as a militiaman; and according to the law of that
time (for this was in 1807, during the very height of the wars against
Napoleon) he must either serve in person or else pay heavily to secure a
substitute. George chose regretfully the latter course--the only one
open to him if he wished still to support his parents and his infant
son. But in order to do so, he had to pay away the whole remainder of
his carefully hoarded savings, and even to borrow L6 to make up the
payment for the substitute. It must have seemed very hard to him to do
this, and many men would have sunk under the blow, become hopeless, or
taken to careless rowdy drinking habits. George Stephenson felt it
bitterly, and gave way for a while to a natural despondency; he would
hardly have been human if he had not; but still, he lived over it, and
in the end worked on again with fuller resolution and vigour than ever.

For several years Geordie, as his fellow-colliers affectionately called
him, continued to live on at one or other of the Killingworth
collieries. In a short time, he entered into a small contract with his
employers for "brakeing" the engines; and in the course of this
contract, he invented certain improvements in the matter of saving wear
and tear of ropes, which were both profitable to himself and also in
some small degree pointed the way toward his future plans for the