"Well, the easiest way isn't always the best," the deacon had retorted.
Joe remembered that now. It would be easier to keep on with the professor's show, for the work was all planned out for him, and he had but to fulfil certain engagements. Then, too, he was getting to be expert in the tricks.
"But I want to get on in life," reasoned Joe. "Forty dollars a week is more than I'm getting now, nor will I stick at that point in the circus. It will be hard work, but I can stand it."
He had almost made up his mind. He decided he would go back and acquaint the professor with his decision.
As Joe was passing a sort of hotel in a poor section of the town he almost ran into, or, rather, was himself almost run into by a man who emerged from the place quickly but unsteadily.
Joe was about to pass on with a muttered apology, though he did not feel the collision to be his fault, when the man angrily demanded:
"What's the matter with you, anyhow? Why don't you look where you're going?"
"I tried to," said Joe, mildly enough. "Hope I didn't hurt you."
"Well, you banged me hard enough!"
The man seemed a little more mollified now. Joe was at once struck by something familiar in his voice and his looks. He took a second glance and in an instant he recognized the man as one of the circus trapeze performers he had seen the day he went to the big tent, or "main top," of Sampson Brothers' Circus to watch the professionals at their practice. The man was one of the troupe known as the "Lascalla Brothers," though the relationship was assumed, rather than real.