"I wonder if it's to take his place that Jim Tracy wants me?" mused Joe, as he turned aside. "I guess Jim put up with this fellow as long as he could. Poor chap! He was a good acrobat, too--one of the best in the country." Joe knew the Lascalla Brothers by reputation. "If I take his place----" Joe was doing some quick thinking. "Oh, well, I've got to take chances," he told himself. "After all, we may never meet." Joe had fully made up his mind. Before going back to the professor he stopped at the telegraph office and sent this message to Jim Tracy. "Will join circus in two days." CHAPTER V OFF TO THE CIRCUS "Well?" questioned Professor Rosello, as Joe came back to the hotel. "Is it my show or----" "The circus," answered Joe, and he did not smile. He was rather serious about it, for in spite of what his friend had said Joe could but feel that the magician might be disappointed over the choice. But Professor Rosello was a broad-minded man, as well as a fair and generous one. "Joe, I'm sure you did just the right thing!" he exclaimed, as he shook hands with the boy wizard, or rather with the former boy wizard, for the lad was about to give up that life. Yet Joe knew that he would not altogether give it up. He would always retain his knowledge and ability in the art of mystifying. "Yes, I thought it all over," said Joe, "and I concluded that I could do better on the trapeze than at sleight-of-hand. You see, if I want to be a successful circus performer I have to begin soon. The older I get the less active I'll be, and some tricks take years to polish off so one can do them easily." "I understand," the professor said. "I think you did the right thing for yourself." "Of course if I could be any help to you I wouldn't leave you this way," Joe went on earnestly. "I wouldn't desert in a time of trouble." "Oh, it isn't exactly trouble," replied the magician. "I really need a rest, and you're not taking my offer won't mean any money loss to me, though, personally, I shall feel sorry at losing you. But I want you to do the best possible thing for yourself. Don't consider me at all. In fact you don't have to. I am going to take a rest. I need it. I've been in this business nearly thirty years now, and time is beginning to tell. "I think there is more of a future for you in the circus than there would be in magic. Not that you have exhausted the possibilities of magic by any means, but changes are taking place in the public. The moving pictures are drawing away from us the audiences we might otherwise attract. Then, too, there has been so much written and exposed concerning our tricks, that it is very hard to get up an effective illusion. Even the children can now guess how many of the tricks are done. "It may be that I shall give up altogether. At, any rate I will lease my show out for a time. I'm I going to take a rest. And now about your plans. What are you going to do?"