Once, with an inconsolable countenance, he came to me, saying that his casket was nowhere to be found; he had sought for it in his hiding-place, and it was not there.
I asked him where he had hidden it?
"Among the guns," he replied.
"Then depend upon it, Lemsford, that Quoin has been the death of it." Straight to Quoin went the poet.

But Quoin knew nothing about it.

For ten mortal days the poet was not to be comforted; dividing his leisure time between cursing Quoin and lamenting his loss.

The world is undone, he must have thought: no such calamity has befallen it since the Deluge;--my verses are perished.
But though Quoin, as it afterward turned out, had indeed found the box, it so happened that he had not destroyed it; which no doubt led Lemsford to infer that a superintending Providence had interposed to preserve to posterity his invaluable casket.

It was found at last, lying exposed near the galley.
Lemsford was not the only literary man on board the Neversink.