.

A year later, George's only son Robert was born; and from that moment
the history of those two able and useful lives is almost inseparable.
During the whole of George Stephenson's long upward struggle, and
during the hard battle he had afterwards to fight on behalf of his
grand design of railways, he met with truer sympathy, appreciation, and
comfort from his brave and gifted son than from any other person
whatsoever. Unhappily, his pleasure and delight in the up-bringing of
his boy was soon to be clouded for a while by the one great bereavement
of an otherwise singularly placid and 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 their death, in all the s