Mr. Crawford’s injustice resulted in the early death of one daughter, and left bitter memories of her father in the heart of the other. FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. JASON and Eunice Kimball had always longed for money. They had spent their fifteen years of married life on a New England farm, with all its cares and hardships, its early rising, long hours of labor, and little compensation. The white house, with its green blinds, roof sloping to the rear, and great fir-trees in the front yard, had grown dingy with dust and rain, and there had been no money to repair it. The children, Susie, James, and little Jason, fourteen, twelve, and ten years old, had worked like their thrifty parents, gaining the somewhat meagre schooling of a half-deserted New England town. Now a great change had come to the Kimball family. A relative had died and had left to Mrs. Kimball fifteen thousand dollars. It seemed an enormous amount in one way, but not enormous in another. The children must be better dressed and prepared for college, the father must give up the slow gains of the farm and go into business, and Mrs. Kimball must make herself ready in garb and manner for the new life. It was evident that they must move to some village where schools were good and business would be prosperous. What town and what business? These were the exciting topics that were discussed by night and by day. Jason knew how to till the soil, to harvest grain, to be an industrious and good citizen and a kind husband, but he knew little about the great world of trade. “I might buy out a small grocery, Eunice,” said the husband one evening. “People must eat, whether they have decent clothes or books or schools.” “Ah, if you once looked at Mr. Jones’s books and saw the uncollectible bills, even from so-called ‘good families,’ you would not undertake that business!” “I might buy a tract of land in a growing town and sell lots.” “But what if a panic came, and you lost all?” said the conservative wife. As soon as it became known that the Kimballs had fallen heir to fifteen thousand dollars, Mr. Kimball was besought on all sides to enter one kind of business or another. One applicant had invented a unique coffee-pot, which would make good coffee out of even a poor berry, and a fortune could certainly be made, if only capital were provided. Another person had a new style of wash-boiler, and experimented with it on Mrs. Kimball’s kitchen stove, breaking every lid in the operation. Fortunes seemed lying about at every corner of the street, and the only wonder was that everybody did not get rich. Mr. Kimball was besought to take out life insurance, to buy acres of land in the far West, unseen by buyer or seller, to give to every charity within the State, where-ever the knowledge of the fifteen-thousand-dollar inheritance had permeated. Finally the town for a home was decided upon, and the business—that of selling coal.