Sold at Nᵒ 159 near Somerset House, Strand May 10ᵗʰ, 1774._] For Wynne Ryland’s conscience is becoming a heavy burden. In spite of his princely income, artistic improvidence is beginning to weigh him down. Over his soul the like spirit that swayed Sieur Boucher the incomparable reigns absolute. Gilded rooms, where the Eo. tables pave the road to ruin, swallow his guineas in their rapacious maw. His open hand scatters gold amidst his friends. Miss Angel, his patron saint, returns to her native land. Although he remains the kind husband and devoted father, the shadow of sin creeps over his roof-tree. A pretty girl, whose fresh young beauty has stolen his heart from the mother of his children, becomes a mistress who squanders his earnings faster than they are reaped. Those bill of exchange transactions with bankers Asgill and Nightingale grow more considerable. Friends and accommodators Ransome and Moreland often receive him in their counting-house, with his pockets full of crisp notes drawn upon the Honourable the East India Company of Leadenhall Street; for this clean, easy paper-credit is always welcomed as deposit for current coin. At last comes the fatal crash, bursting over the town in a thunderclap, striking sorrow into the hearts of thousands. On the 3rd of April 1783, when the London merchant opens his newspaper--_Morning Chronicle or Daily Advertiser_--he reads there that William Wynne Ryland stands charged before the Right Hon. the Lord Mayor on suspicion of forging the acceptance of two bills of exchange for payment of £7114, with intent to defraud the United East India Company. Kind John Gwynn throws aside his plans of stately edifices, walking the streets with streaming eyes, sorrowing for his friend. Statuesque Domenico Angelo hurries to condole with poor Mary Ryland, and the sight of the agonised wife and children robs the good-hearted Italian swordsman of sleep. But the engraver had left his home at Knightsbridge on the first of the month, and although the City Marshal searches for him in the Old Bailey and in the Minories, nothing is heard of him for fourteen days.