are working on
it."

"Ham Logan! Is he going to be in it with you?" asked the ringmaster in
some surprise.

"Of course!" answered Joe. "It's partly his idea. He's an old
fire-actor, you know, and he's given me some good suggestions. Yes, he's
going to help me. I think we'll put the act on next week. We've got to
train some new performers first."

"New performers! Say, what are you going to do, Joe, take a troupe of
fire-eating actors out on the road?"

"Something like that, yes," answered the young magician, with a laugh.
"You'll see."

Joe Strong varied his acts in the circus tent Sometimes he would omit
the "vanishing lady" act, as Helen wanted to put through some extra work
with Rosebud, and there was not time for both. Again he would leave out
some of his acrobatic work, or perhaps not do the trick of seeming to
catch fire and extinguishing the flames in Benny Turton's tank. Once in
a while he would omit the ten thousand dollar mystery box trick.

But on the day when he had the above conversation with Jim Tracy they
were showing in a large factory town. There had been good business in
the afternoon, and Joe had not done the box trick. But just before the
evening show Jim came to Joe and said:

"There've been several requests, Joe, that you put the box trick on
to-night."

"Requests from whom?" Joe asked.

"One of the newspaper men was telling me they received a lot of
telephone calls to-day asking if the box trick would be done and the
reward paid in case some one discovered the way it was done."

"What did you say?"

"I said I thought you'd put the trick on in that case. Don't you think
you'd better? We didn't advertise it specially for to-night, but there
might be a lot of sore-heads if we don't pull it off."

"Oh, I'll do it all right!" declared Joe. "I thought it was getting a
bit stale. But if the crowd wants to see it I'll do it."

"I guess it will be better," said the ringmaster.

Accordingly, at the proper time, Joe, in his dazzling white suit, took
his place in the silk-curtained enclosure. Helen, in her black dress,
was ready to help him. The fireman, with his gleaming ax, ready to chop
Joe out of the box in case anything should go wrong, was also on the
stage.

As has been related in the other book, this last was done only for
effect. Joe well knew that he could get out of the box. The manager made
the usual offer of ten thousand dollars to be paid to any one who would
disclose how th