CHAPTER V
THE CAPTAIN OF THE CREW
A WEEK after the opening of the mid-winter term at St. Timothy’s, Edward began training with the candidates for the Pythian crew. The number of them varied with the weather; if that was good and the skating was fine, there would be only a dozen or fifteen boys at work in the gymnasium; whereas on stormy afternoons there might be a hundred, of whom at least half considered themselves crew candidates.
Edward was one of the most constant, and was rewarded after a while for his constancy, for on a particularly lean day Tom Sheldon, the captain, said to him,—
“I’ve got to play hockey this afternoon, and most of the fellows will be doing that too; will you run the squad, Crashaw?”
Running the squad meant leading them in the pulling of chest-weights, stroking and
