There is a well near a small town which villagers visit in the night. They throw pennies down the well, and a gentleman appears to grant them their wishes.

One villager named Ma Tathers goes down to the well one night and throws a penny into the well, and the gentleman in the well emerges, dressed in finery but thoroughly wet, his body dripping with water. Ma Tathers wishes for her grandsons to be fed until they can support themselves. The gentleman takes her penny, but as she leaves, he also eats all her memories. Ma Tathers returns to her grandsons. They are delivered food each and every day, but Ma Tathers talks only of the well gentleman until the day she dies, remembering nothing else.

One of the stories Ma Tathers tells while she lives is that of Mister Horton. Mister Horton was a man who visited the gentleman in his well one night long ago, before Ma Tathers. He asked the gentleman of the well to punish the man responsible for his wife's infidelity. The gentleman of the well thus took Mister Horton's riches and turned his house into a shanty — for Mister Horton is the man responsible for his wife's infidelity, through his petty jealousy and lack of compassion.

Mister Horton in turn had told his children about the price one pays for visiting the gentleman in the well. He told them the story of Little Susanne, who wished to the gentleman that her parents stop fighting and that her runaway cat return. When Little Susanne got home from the well, her house was on fire, her parents dying inside. Her runaway cat, however, returned to her and was with her through the rest of her life, never aging.

One night years later, a man named Theo visits the well gentleman, wishing for his wife to bear a child. She does, a young boy whom they name Tim. When Theo warns Tim of the gentleman in the well, Tim wonders why nobody has wished to have the gentleman's magic for themselves, so that they can have his incredible powers. Tim and his dog head down to the well and the gentleman, and the gentleman of the well remembers how he was once a boy who visited this very well. Soon, he thinks, as Tim approaches, he will be a boy once again.