The engine proved a clumsy affair, moved at a snail's pace, often got off the rails, and at length, voted by the workmen a "perfect plague," it was taken off. The unsuccessful inventor was called a fool by his neighbours, and his efforts an apt illustration that "a fool and his money are soon parted." In spite of failure, Mr. Blackett had faith that the thing could be done. He built a third, and ran it on the tramroad that passed by old Bob Stephenson's cottage door. And George at his colliery, seven miles off, as you may suppose, listened to every account of it with profound interest. Over he went, as often as he could, to see "Black Billy," a rough specimen of machinery at best, doing very little service beyond what a good horse could do.

George carried "Black Billy" back in his mind to Killingworth, studying its defects and laying plans to improve it. I do not know how long he was coming to it, but he at length gave it as his opinion that he could make a better "travelling engine" than that.

Tidings came to Killingworth about this time that the trial of a new engine was to take place on a certain day at Leeds, and George did not lose the chance of being present. Though the engine moved no faster than three miles an hour, its constructor counted it a success. It proved, however, unsteady and unreliable, and at last blew up, which was the end of it.

What did George think then? He more than ever wanted to try his hand at the business. Lord Ravensworth, knowing enough of Stephenson to have faith in him, hearing of this, advanced means for the enterprise. Good tools and good workmen were alike wanting; but after much labour, alteration, and anxiety, in ten months' time the engine was completed and put on the railway, July 25, 1814.

Although the best yet made, it was awkward and slow. It carried eight loaded waggons of thirty tons' weight at a speed not above four miles an hour. The want of springs occasioned a vast deal of jolting, which damaged the machinery, and at the close of a year's trial it was found about as costly as horse-power.

How to increase the power of his engine—that was the puzzling question which George studied to answer. He wrestled with it day and night, and at length determined to try again. In due time another was built, "Puffing Billy," which most persons looked upon as a marvel, but, shaking their heads, prophesied it would make a terrible blow-up some day. "Puffing Billy," however, went to work, and worked steadily on, a vast advance on all preceding attempts. It attracted little or no attention outside the narrow circle of the collieries. The great men of England did not know that in a far-off nook of the realm there was slowly generating a power, under the persistent thought of a humble working-man, which, before many years, would revolutionize the trade of the kingdom and create a new source of wealth.

"Puffing Billy," in fact, humble as its pretensions were, has proved to have been the type of all locomotives since.

Had George Stephenson satisfied himself? No. His evenings were chiefly spent at home with his son Robert, now under him in the colliery, studying and discussing together how to evoke the hidden power yet pent up in "Puffing Billy." The son was even more sanguine than his father, and many an amendment had "Billy" to undergo to satisfy the quick intellect and practical judgment of the youth.

Mr. Stephenson, delighted with Robert's scientific tastes and skill, and ever alive to the deficiencies of his own education, was anxious to give him still further advantages. For this purpose he took him from a promising post at the colliery and sent him to the University of Edinburgh.

Here he enjoyed a six months' course of study; and so well prepared was he for it by his wellformed habits of application and thinking, that he gained in six months as much as many a student did in three years. Certain it was his father felt amply repaid for the draft it made on his purse, when Robert reappeared at the cottage in the spring, with a prize for successful scholarship in mathematics. He was eighteen then.

CHAPTER IV.

TWO CITIES THAT WANTED TO GET NEAR EACH OTHER—A NEW FRIEND.

Manchester, thirty miles south-east of Liverpool, is the great centre of our cotton trade. Its cloths are found in every market in the world. Cotton coming to Liverpool is sent to the Manchester mills, and the goods which the mills turn out are returned to Liverpool to be shipped elsewhere. The two cities, therefore, are intimately connected by constant intercourse and mutual interest.

Two water communications existed between them: one by the rivers Mersey and Irwell, the other by the famous Bridgewater Canal, which did an immense business at an enormous profit. But the Manchester mills were fast outgrowing these slow and cumbersome modes of travel. Liverpool warehouses were piled with bales of cotton waiting to go, and the mills at Manchester had often to stop because it did not come. Goods also found as much difficulty in getting back. Merchants and manufacturers both grumbled. Business was in straits. What was to be done? Carting was quite out of the question. Canal owners were besought to enlarge their water power. No, they would do nothing. They were satisfied with things as they were. Their dividends were sure.

But want demands supply. Need creates resources. Something must be done to facilitate the transit of goods between the two cities. What? Build a tramroad, or a railroad. Nobody, however, but a very fast man would risk his good sense by seriously advising a railroad. Prudent men would certainly shun him. A tramroad was a better understood thing. The collieries had used small pieces of them for years. A tramroad then. Business men put their heads together, and began earnestly to talk of a tramroad.

Edward James, a rich and enterprising man, entered heartily into the project, and undertook to make surveys for a suitable route. And not long after a party of surveyors were seen in the fields near Liverpool. Their instruments and movements excited attention. People eyed them with anxiety: suspicions were roused: the inhabitants became alarmed. Who were they, making such mysterious measurements and calculations on other people's land? A mob gradually gathered, whose angry tones and threatening gestures warned the surveyors of a storm brewing over their heads. Wisely considering that flight was better than fight, they took themselves off, and by-and-by turned up farther on.

The landowners, who might be supposed to have known better, told the farmers to drive them off; and the farmers, with their hands, were only too ready to obey. They stationed themselves at the field gates and bars with pitchforks, rakes, shovels, sticks, and dared the surveyors to come on. A poor chain-man, not quite as nimble as his pursuers, made his leap over a fence, quickened by a pitchfork from behind. Even women and children joined the hue and cry, pelting the strangers with