The Welcome to another episode from one thousand one classic short stories and

tales this one from H. H. Monroe known to many as Saki. The author who brought us last week's The Toys of Peace.

Saki was a skilled writer and one of his favorite targets was Edwardian Society.

That brief period of time following the death of Queen Victoria in

1901 and during the reign of King Edward the 7th which lasted 1901 through

1910, a time in which the fashionable elite, not only in England, but throughout Europe,

ruled the culture. Social standing was everything, and ancestral bloodlines seemed to be an automatic entitlement to the good life.

Another way of saying it is that if you're going to live in a castle, you can't pretend to be royalty.

And that's the scene that Saki places us in with this story.

A Baron and Baroness Grubel have become the owners of a castle in Germany which was owned by an old royal family named Von Sernigrats and when a lowly maid shares the legend of

the castle as well as the secret of her upbringing it sets the grubles back on

their royal heels and ignites a firestorm of distrust and jealousy.

Now to our story, the Wolves of Serenigrats.

Are there any old legends attached to the castle?

Asked Conrad of his sister.

Conrad was a prosperous Hamburg merchant,

but he was the one poetically dispositioned member of an eminently practical family.

The Baroness Grubel shrugged her plump shoulders.

There are always legends hanging about these old places.

They're not difficult to invent and they cost nothing.

In this case, there is a story that when anyone dies in the castle,

all the dogs in the village and the wild beasts in the forest how all night long it would not be pleasant

...