EVER since I wrote By the Still Waters, while a country pastor, I have longed to write more in the same vein. Friends who say they were blessed by those rustic sketches have encouraged me to write a companion volume, but a city pastorate of five years and many preaching journeys over the land have not provided a suitable setting for rural reflections. One cannot write of these things in a hotel room. It has become possible through circumstances, evidently the Lord's leading, to spend a few autumn weeks in the old home in the hills. No sooner had this opportunity opened before me than I felt impressed to return to my first love and resume the trail of reflections I left in the Carolina lowlands. Then it was the low country, and now it is the hills, but both are Carolina and both are "countrified" and I trust the theme in both cases is common to hearts everywhere. A few of these sketches were published with some changes in the Charlotte (N. C.) Observer, and grateful acknowledgement is hereby made for permission to reprint them. But all of them are FOREWORD A skin, and in these simple matters that abide time makes little difference. They are sent forth to the glory of our Lord Who spoke the colorful language of the outdoors and Who bade His disciples of old, "Come ye yourselves apart and rest awhile." V. H. Greensboro, N. C.