Have you ever gone to the door to answer the bell, only to find no one there?

Timothy had a very similar and very recurrent problem. The bells would not stop ringing in the graveyard outside his house.

He had checked them, of course. When he first moved into the lonesome cottage, he would race to check why the bells rang, as was his duty. But there was no one who could be ringing them.

The graves were empty.

They were supposed to let him know if someone was buried alive. He reasoned that alive or not, the buried part was clearly not an issue. So, never one to raise a fuss, Timothy simply removed the clappers from the bells and never said a word to mourners leaving flowers at empty graves.

His concern was only with the dead who wished to rest.