The owners were fraudulent trustees to sell even under temptation of such prices as were offered? Well, many did not sell, and for others there was the excuse, besides natural greed, of war-weariness. They had the feeling that here was security offered them, ease after years of strain; it was a _sauve qui peut_ and the devil take the hindmost. They were men who hadn’t been in business for their health and were offered golden opportunity to retire from business. They had been, perhaps, a little jealous of others who had made strictly war wealth, and this was their chance to get hold, at second hand, of a share of those war profits. There was the example of others... there would be stressful times ahead for the cotton trade... Labor upheavals... it was good to be out of it all, with one’s money gently in the Funds. And Finance goes stealthily to work: it was not at first apparent, even to sellers, that behind the nominal buyers were non-Lancashire financiers. There was no immediate apprehension of the objects; nobody took quick alarm. Labor, especially the Oldham spinners, had cotton shares to sell and took a profit with the rest. They started a special share exchange in Oldham: it was open through the Christmas holidays and on New Year’s Day of 1920. That speaks more than volumes for the dementia of that boom. Working on New Year’s Day in Oldham! What was the use of being sentimentally annoyed at being outbidden by a Londoner, even if you perceived he was a Londoner, when the congenital idiot offered ten pounds for a pound share on which you had only paid up five shillings? Appetite grew by what it fed on and Finance ceased to be satisfied with acquiring small mills whose names, at any rate, were unknown to the outside investor. Hepplestall’s was different, Hepplestall’s was known to every shopkeeper and every housewife in the land. It was, in the opinion of Finance, only a question of price; and prices did not cow Finance. William sat in the office of the Hepplestalls with a letter before him which was Finance’s opening gambit in the game. It was addressed to him personally, marked “private and confidential,” by a London firm of chartered accountants whose national eminence left no doubt of the serious intentions of their clients.