And the move was to be a two-fold success. The Saints did retake the title and in the process Mark was switched from being a forward to centre-half, presumably a Scottish, attacking centre-half, a position he was to retain for the rest of his career. It was to include 1903-4 back at Hearts then a prolonged stay once more Down South. There would be five years at Fulham, three from 1904 including the Southern League title once more in 1906 that led to the club's election to the Football League. In that period he was playing alongside initially a squad with eleven Scots in it, falling in 1906-7 to five but including R.C. Hamilton, with a certain Jimmy Hogan also there. 

However, Bell was never to play to play in the Football League, at least not with the Craven Cottage club. As it joined the Second Division he moved sideways to Clapton Orient for three seasons. Then, aged twenty-nine it was back into the Southern League with Leyton for two more and a season again sideways as New Brompton became Gillingham, by which time he was thirty-two and had in 1906 married, actually in Fulham and recorded as a Print Compositor, his bride a local girl, Charlotte Friend. Furthermore, a daughter had been born still in London in 1908, no doubt contributing to a decision in 1913 for the family as a whole to emigrate to Australia. 

Yet they did not stay. Within a year they were back, he turning out until 1916 back at Fulham until close-down but having enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corp until demobilisation, at which point this time they went not South but back north to Auld Reekie. And there they would remain until Charlotte's death in 1930 at the age of fifty-eight, survived by Mark for over two decades. His passing would be in 1952 finally in Morningside, he aged eighty, having lived mostly in Leith and working until retirement on the railways as a Porter.