While thus advancing step by step--attending to the business of the Killingworth Colliery, and laying out railways in the neighborhood--he was carefully watching over the education of his son. We have already seen that Robert was sent to school at Newcastle, where he remained about four years. While Robert was at school, his father, as usual, made his son's education instrumental to his own. He entered him a member of the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Institute, the subscription to which was three guineas a year. Robert spent much of his leisure hours there, reading and studying; and when he went home in the afternoons, he was accustomed to carry home with him a volume of the "Repertory of Arts and Sciences," or of some work on practical science, which furnished the subject of interesting reading and discussion in the evening hours. Both father and son were always ready to acknowledge the great advantages they had derived from the use of so excellent a library of books; and, toward the close of his life, the latter, in recognition of his debt of gratitude to the institution, contributed a large sum for the purpose of clearing off the debt, but conditional on the annual subscription being reduced to a guinea, in order that the usefulness of the Institute might be extended. Robert left school in the summer of 1819, and was put apprentice to Mr. Nicholas Wood, the head viewer at Killingworth, to learn the business of the colliery. He served in that capacity for about three years, during which time he became familiar with most departments of underground work. His occupation was not unattended with peril, as the following incident will show. Though the use of the Geordy lamp had become general in the Killingworth pits, and the workmen were bound, under a penalty of half a crown, not to use a naked candle, it was difficult to enforce the rule, and even the masters themselves occasionally broke it. One day Nicholas Wood, the head viewer, Moodie, the under viewer, and Robert Stephenson, were proceeding along one of the galleries, Wood with a naked candle in his hand, and Robert following him with a lamp. They came to a place where a fall of stones from the roof had taken place, on which Wood, who was first, proceeded to clamber over the stones, holding high the naked candle. He had nearly reached the summit of the heap, when the fire-damp, which had accumulated in the hollow of the roof, exploded, and instantly the whole party were blown down, and the lights extinguished. They were a mile from the shaft, and quite in the dark. There was a rush of the work-people from all quarters toward the shaft, for it was feared that the fire might extend to more dangerous parts of the pit, where, if the gas had exploded, every soul in the mine must inevitably have perished. Robert Stephenson and Moodie, on the first impulse, ran back at full speed along the dark gallery leading to the shaft, coming into