"If you are at liberty, can use you in a single trapeze act. Forty a week to start. Wire me at Slater Junction. We show there three days. Jim Tracy--Sampson Bros. Circus." "What is it?" asked the professor as he noted a strange look on Joe's face. In fact, there was a combination of looks. There was surprise, and doubt, and pleased anticipation. "It's an offer," answered Joe, slowly. "An offer!" "Yes, to join a circus." "A circus!" The professor did not seem capable of talking in very long sentences. "Yes, the Sampson Brothers' Show," Joe went on. "You know I went to see them that time they played the same town and date we did. I met the 'human fish' and----" "Oh, yes, I remember. You did some acts on the trapeze then." "Yes, and this Jim Tracy--he's ring-master and one of the owners--made me a sort of offer then. But I didn't want to leave you. Now he renews the offer." The boy wizard handed the message to the professor who read it through carefully. Then after a look at Joe he said: "Well, my boy, that's a good offer, I'd take it. I sha'n't be able to pay you forty a week for some time, though you might make it if you took my show out on the road alone, or with one assistant. Then, too, there's always a chance to make more in a circus--that is, if you please your public. I might say thrill them enough, for your trapeze act will have to be mostly thrills, I take it." "Yes," assented Joe. And, somehow, a feeling of exultation came to him. While doing puzzling tricks before a mystified audience was enticing work, yet Joe had a longing for the circus. He was almost as much at home high in the air, with nothing but a slack wire or a swaying rope to support him, as he was on the ground. Part of this was due to his early attempts to emulate the feats of circus performers, but the larger part of it was born in him. He inherited much of his daring from his mother, and his quickness of eye and hand from his father. Moreover, mingled with the desire to do some thrilling act high up on a trapeze in a circus tent, while the crowd below held its breath, Joe felt a desire to meet again pretty Helen Morton, whose bright smile and laughing eyes he seemed to see in fancy now. "It's a good offer," went on the professor, slowly, "and it seems to come at the right time for both of us, Joe. We were talking about your taking out my show. I really don't feel able to keep up with it--at least for a time. Are you ready to give me an answer now, Joe, or would you like to think it over a bit?" "Perhaps I had better think of it a bit," the youth answered. "Though I have pretty nearly made up my mind."