“Robie Strange is my man,” thinks painter Allan, and makes the mistake of telling his illustrious ex-sitters before he has caught his engraver. There is a dreadful _contretemps_. Stout-hearted Robie is acquainted with Scottish truck--he will have none of them. “Off to Rome to copy great masters,” is the excuse. “Cannot waste four years over your pictures!” But in stout Robie’s heart of hearts there may lurk another motive; for Robie has whirled his claymore at Prestonpans, and Charlie is his darling. Indeed, he might have gone the way of wry-necked old Lovat had not a devoted damsel allowed him to hide beneath her hoop--to whose skirts, very properly, he remained attached ever after. Robie snorts at the canny price they offer him. A hundred pounds to engrave the cod-fish features of royal George! when Rome and the great masters are calling loudly, where he will kiss hands with his own King James III. “No, thank you!” says Robie, and, packing up chalks and drawing-board, takes himself off on his travels. In this dilemma Mæcenas Bute, who, to do him justice, keeps his eyes open for budding genius, hears of the young Welsh engraver, the beater of Frenchmen on their own soil. Being an art-collector, probably he has seen an assortment of the fleshy prints after Boucher. So, as Robie is with Charlie over the water, Bute secures Ryland to copy his likeness by the polite Allan, and, in due course, “the handsomest legs in England”--legs literally fit for a boot--appear in a very creditable line-engraving, emblazoned with a coat of arms. Thus in this month of February 1763 William Wynne has reached the top of the tree, happy and smiling, at Ye Red Lamp, Russell Street, Covent Garden, close to Button’s and Will’s. The portrait of the beautiful legs, along with his red-chalk imitations--employed industriously ever since his return from the Continent in several sketches from the old masters,--convinces ‘Modern Mæcenas’ that Robie’s room is better than his company. A word whispered in the ear of the royal mother would be enough to persuade apron-string George that the clever Welshman is the artist for his features. At all events the great honour is offered, and Taffy, very shrewdly keeping his head, takes care that, from his point of view, it is a good deal. It is a most amazing deal--£100 down for the drawings, £50 a quarter as long as the work lasts, and the proceeds of the copyright. However, thus it stands--Wynne Ryland blazons himself with the fearsome title, ‘Calcographus Regis Britanniæ’ and, setting up in the true manner of a master, begins to take pupils. One of these, worthy James Strutt, who comes to him the year after his achievement with the beautiful legs, remains a trusted friend through life, and the tutor, in turn, of his eldest son, who, alas, meets an early death.