Page:Stanwood Pier--Crashaw brothers.djvu/105



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