At this time, and for many years after, Stephenson dwelt in a cottage standing by the side of the road leading from the West Moor Pit to Killingworth. The railway from West Moor crosses this road close by the easternmost end of the cottage. The dwelling originally consisted of but one apartment on the ground floor, with a garret overhead, to which access was obtained by means of a step-ladder. With his own hands Stephenson built an oven, and in the course of time he added rooms to the cottage, until it became expanded into a comfortable four-roomed dwelling, in which he remained as long as he lived at Killingworth. [Illustration: STEPHENSON'S COTTAGE, WEST MOOR. [By R. P. Leitch.]] He continued as fond of birds and animals as ever, and seemed to have the power of attaching them to him in a remarkable degree. He had a blackbird at Killingworth so fond of him that it would fly about the cottage, and on holding out his finger the bird would come and perch upon it directly. A cage was built for "blackie" in the partition between the passage and the room, a square of glass forming its outer wall; and Robert used afterward to take pleasure in describing the oddity of the bird, imitating the manner in which it would cock its head on his father's entering the house, and follow him with its eye into the inner apartment. Neighbors were accustomed to call at the cottage and have their clocks and watches set to rights when they went wrong. One day, after looking at the works of a watch left by a pitman's wife, George handed it to his son: "Put her in the oven, Robert," said he, "for a quarter of an hour or so." It seemed an odd way of repairing a watch; nevertheless, the watch was put into the oven, and at the end of the appointed time it was taken out, going all right. The wheels had merely got clogged by the oil congealed by the cold, which at once explains the rationale of the remedy adopted. There was a little garden attached to the cottage, in which, while a workman, Stephenson took a pride in growing gigantic leeks and astonishing cabbages. There was great competition in the growing of vegetables among the villagers, all of whom he excelled excepting one, whose cabbages sometimes outshone his. To protect his garden-crops from the ravages of the birds, he invented a strange sort of "fley-craw," which moved its arms with the wind; and he fastened his garden-door by means of a piece of ingenious mechanism, so that no one but himself could enter it. His cottage was quite a curiosity-shop of models of engines, self-acting planes, and perpetual-motion machines. The last named contrivances, however, were only unsuccessful attempts to solve a problem which had already baffled hundreds of preceding inventors.