Meanwhile, thoughts at which they would have stood aghast mingled in the busy brain of Horace with the drier matters of daily work which passed through his hands. Upon which of these two men who were in his power should he exercise that unlooked-for empire? Should he frighten Mr. Pouncet out of his wits by disclosing to him his new discovery? He was certainly the most likely person to be frightened with ease; but this did not suit the ideas of Horace. He was tired of Kenlisle, and found no advantage in a residence there, and he felt in Mr. Stenhouse a kindred spirit with whom he could work, and under whom his fortune was secure. Thus the virtuous young man reasoned as he sat at his desk, the bland object of his thoughts passing him occasionally with smiles upon that wide mouth which the old pitman remembered so well. It might not be possible for Horace to refrain from waving his whip over the head of his present employer, but it was the stranger upon whom for his own advancement he fixed his eyes. Mr. Stenhouse was a man much more able to understand his gifts, and give them their due influence, than Mr. Pouncet would ever be; and in the excitement and exaltation of his present mood Horace thrust from his mind more consciously than ever before that anxiety about his father's secret which had moved him to so much eagerness ere he began to have affairs and prospects of his own. He became contemptuous of it in his youthful self-importance and sense of power. He was dazzled to see how his own cool head and unimpressionable spirit, the undeviating iron confidence of his supreme self-love, had imposed upon his comrades in the town--if comrades they could be called, who won no confidence and received no friendship from him; and he was elated with the new power he had gained, and ready to believe himself one of those conquerors of fortune before whose promptitude and skill and unfailing acuteness every obstacle gives way.