Wearing a basket on his back that would hold the young orphan William Brower and holding a cane and rifle, Eben Holden prepares to head out into the wilderness:

I was old for my age, they tell me, and had a serious look and a wise way of talking, for a boy so young; but I had no notion of what lay before or behind us.
“Now, boy, take a good look at the old house,” I remember he whispered to me at the gate that night. “Taint likely ye’ll ever see it ag’in. Keep quiet now,” he added, letting down the bars at the foot of the lane. “We’re goin’ west an’ we mustn’t let the grass grow under us. Got t’ be purty spry I can tell ye.” (1.)

1. Eben Holden: Chapter I: pp. 6-7