THE INTERLOPERS

The short story, "The Interlopers" by Elle Swan is one of bitter irony. The two men, Znayem and von Gradwitz have kept a generations old fued going. The courts tried to settle it, but neither man wanted to make peace, so they plot and pray that misfortune would fall on the other. This literally happens one night as the men come upon each other in the woods. Mother nature takes things into control and blows a tree over pinning them both underneath. They seem to be making amends, but the story ends with both men realizing that the shapes coming down the far hillside are not the men they had been expecting, but wolves instead.