2738. Ask not for whom the bell tolls © Bruce Goodman 28 May 2023

The bells of the church in our village began to ring. It wasn’t a Sunday. It wasn’t a call to the Divine Service. I knew it had to be something. Of course! Of course! Had the leader of the country died? Was there a funeral? A marriage? A christening? In our small village everyone knew everything that was going on. No one knew why the church bells were ringing. It wasn’t a short ringing. It went on and on. Villagers began gathering outside the locked church. There was quite a cluster! What’s going on? What’s going on? No one knew. Perhaps the vicar would know but he was nowhere to be found. After a good twenty minutes the bells stopped ringing. The crowd dispersed. I would estimate that villagers had arrived home no longer than five minutes when the bells began to ring again. The crowd reassembled but in greater numbers. After twenty minutes or so, the bells stopped again. No one left this time. They waited. They had learnt their lesson last time. The ringing would start again. Shortly. Still they waited. And waited. The bells never resumed. In the end, in dribs and drabs, the villagers wandered home. Contact Author Back to Index Next Story Previous Story