So now it is evening time, after dinner, and all the same people come to the Colonel's house and gather into the drawing room.  They pull the chairs close to the fire, and there is a kettle, and a teapot, and everyone settles down to listen to the story told by the clergyman, Ralph Armstrong.  He calls his story, "The Bell."  It is a sad story, to help Adela.

In a little house beside a village street, sitting at the front window, all but hidden by hardy geraniums, a woman sits quietly.  Her name is Elsie.  She lives with her uncle and her aunt and their ferocious bulldog.  She lives with them because her parents died when she was a girl.  She had epilepsy as a child, and her only friend was the youngest son of her aunt and uncle, but he has moved away to college now.

In the street she hears children teasing a lost old man who goes around shuffling and saying odd things, but mostly, "Come hame, the wow of Riven!"  Elsie doesn't know why he goes around saying this, or what a "wow" could be, but she feels drawn to the old man.

One afternoon Elsie goes for a walk.  She walks out of the village and into the fields.  She finds herself finding an old crumbling churchyard, and sits down to rest beside it.  She falls asleep there and a wind comes into the church's bell-tower, moving the bell.  The bell gives a low, deep toll, calling her awake.  She sees it is getting dark.  Sensing someone nearby, she hears the voice of the lost old man saying, "Come hame! the wow of Riven!"  

This completely unsettles her, but when she recovers, it dawns on her that the 'wow' must be the bell, and 'Riven' must be the place where the church yard is.  Somehow, she begins to understand that beyond the world, there must be a home for her.  She returns to the village and to her uncle's house.   

 Later in the week her childhood epilepsy returns.  Also that week, her uncle's ferocious bulldog attacks the old man, and when Elsie runs out to try to help him, the dog attacks her too.   Her one friend from childhood, the youngest son of her aunt and uncle, who has recently returned from college, full of hopes and dreams having everything to do with life, and nothing to do with Elsie, still sees pity on Elsie. Coming to her rescue, he kicks the bulldog away and does his best to nurse her back to health, since he happens to be a doctor.  But she never recovers, and neither does the old man.  The bulldog is not the reason.  The old man and Elsie pine away, they die within days of each other.  They are buried in the old church yard, but they never mind it because, they are coming home.

The clergyman's story leaves everyone quiet.  Adela applies to her handkerchief.  When the company begins to speak it is quietly and wistfully.  They decide they will meet again after a day or two has past, and they ask the schoolmaster, Mr. Bloomfield, to bring the next story.