A stray paragraph in a newspaper gave him the news that among the Blue Ridge and Alleghany mountains she had achieved a startling success in the propaganda of Second Adventism. The rural population of Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina had begun robing itself in white; drawn by the spirit, thousands upon thousands of Last Day saints made periodical pilgrimages to the tops of the high mountains, and there picnicked for whole weeks at a time waiting for an Event which, though it failed to show visibly, always sent them back to their homes spiritually refreshed. Rain-baptisms--by preference in a thunder-storm--were another manifestation of the new faith. There were startling cases when a date had been fixed weeks beforehand; torrential rains had descended in answer to prayer and washed into renewed sanctity five thousand converts at a time. Mr. Trimblerigg had always had a modernist’s doubt about the efficacy of prayer either for fine weather or wet. But supposing these accounts to be true, Isabel Sparling was a water-finder of no uncertain power. If she had ever failed, the papers made no report of it; at any rate, in States where the rainfall was generally less than could be desired, the average was going steadily up, and conversion to Second Adventism had in consequence become popular. Manifestly she had got her stick by the right end; in this practical age a combination between revealed religion and good business was the one thing needful, and as the increased rainfall was welcome to a large agricultural interest, so also were the pilgrimages and the picnics to the retail traders. Pious people, who had hitherto been frugal stay-at-homes, were now spending a great deal upon white linen sunshades, Panama hats, shoe leather, thermos flasks, mineral waters, cooked food of a portable kind and all other necessary accompaniments for outings conducted on a large scale. In a quite important slice of the States religion had once more become not merely popular but vibrant and all-embracing in its character. An ‘urge’ for righteousness had taken hold of whole districts where no ‘urge’ of any kind had been felt before; and what at first had only occurred in rural districts was now rapidly assuming a civic, a municipal, and a territorial character. It was announced that one State Governor at least, and the whole population of a large penal settlement were waiting to receive rain-baptism on the earliest date that Isabel Sparling’s engagements with Heaven would allow.