o take that chance," said the treasurer. "But I'll instruct
the ticket takers to be unusually careful."

That was all that could be done. The detective had reported that he was
making an examination, starting at the paper mill, and was endeavoring
to learn where the bogus tickets had been made.

The circus parade had been held and witnessed by enthusiastic crowds
lining the streets. Then was every prospect of big business, and it was
borne out.

Joe wished he had prepared his fire act earlier but it could not be
helped.

"I'll have it ready for to-morrow, though," he said to Jim Tracy, at the
conclusion of the first afternoon in the big city where they were to
stay three days.

"Then I'm going to have it advertised," said the ringmaster, who also
sometimes acted as assistant general manager. "We'll bill it big. You're
sure of yourself, are you?"

"Oh, yes," answered Joe with a laugh. "I'll give 'em their money's worth
all right, but it won't be the big sensation I'm planning for later on.
That will take time."

"Well, as long as it's a fire act it will be new and novel, and it will
draw," declared Jim Tracy.

It was later in the afternoon, when the circus performance was over,
that Joe and Helen strolled downtown, as was their custom. Some
convention was being held in the city, and across one of the principal
streets was stretched a big banner of the kind used in political
campaigns.

It was hung from a heavy, slack wire from the brick walls of two
opposite buildings, and the banner attracted considerable attention
because of a novel picture on it.

Joe and Helen were standing in the street, looking up at the swaying
creation of canvas and netting, when a woman's cry came to their ears.

"Look! Look! The cat! The cat is walking the wire!" she exclaimed.

Joe and Helen turned first to see who it was that had cried out. It was
a woman in the street, and with her parasol she pointed upward.

There, surely enough, half way out on the thick, slack wire, and high
above the middle of the street was a large white cat. It was walking
the wire as one's pet might walk the back fence. But this cat seemed to
have lost its nerve. It had got half way across, but was afraid to go
farther and could not turn around and go back.

As Joe and Helen looked, a woman appeared at the window of one of the
buildings from the front walls of which the banner was suspended, and,
pointing at the cat, cried:

"A hundred dollars to