Frank had been unfortunate. On the third day of practice he twisted an ankle and had been obliged to sit on the side-lines watching his fellows boom along under instruction of the coach while he saw his chances gradually growing slimmer. To-day he had gone out again and after half an hour again wrenched the bad ankle. It would be another week at least before he could think of playing. "You are the best representation of Gloom I ever saw pulled off," said the Codfish that night as Frank hobbled into the room after dinner at Commons, and threw himself into a chair. "My jinx seem to be working overtime," returned Frank, "and my guardian angel is out visiting somewhere. Did you ever see such luck?" and he deposited the injured leg on the chair in front of him. "Bad judgment, my boy, bad judgment. You should have gone in for the less strenuous sport of rowing as I have," admonished the Codfish. "A lazy, sit-down job and one for which you are peculiarly fitted," broke in Jimmy Turner. "Ah, but my boy, if you can win your Y sitting down, isn't it better than to be mauled by bear-cats every day? I belong to the antisweat brigade." "The only Y you will ever get is the one you find in your soup," Jimmy flung at him. "Stranger things than that have happened, Mr. Turner." "Yes, blue moons, for instance." Codfish, fired by the general fever for something to do outside of the classroom, had indeed enlisted himself as a candidate for the coxswain of the crew, because, as he said, "You only had to sit still, pull ropes now and then and talk." He had been out as one of the coxswains and had shown some aptitude in spite of the fact that he knew nothing whatever about rowing. "I'm paralyzed with amazement," said Frank, looking the Codfish over quizzically, "that you ever got ginger enough into your system to even do sit-down work." "Well, you see it was this way," returned the crew squad-man, crossing one thin leg over the other. "I went down there to the boat house one day, merely to look on, to see----" "To see how the young idea was shooting, eh?" grunted Jimmy. "Precisely. And when the coaches saw me they were struck with my peculiar--ahem----!" "Unfitness!" "Wrong again, the phrase I was going to use was, 'peculiar fitness,' fitness, do you get it? for the job, and begged me to help them out." "And you helped?" "What could I do? Other things are claiming my attention but I could not see rowing go to the bad down there, so I accepted as gracefully as I could." "And now things are in a rotten state?" "For the second time, wrong and always wrong. They are improving daily. Of course, I'm not in the first boat yet, it would have created too much jealousy, but I have assurance from headquarters that I will be moved into the coveted position of cox of the Freshman crew as soon as it has been picked." "Heaven help the first Freshman crew then," groaned Jimmy.