label these words, "Swindells' G 90 Pills."

I sat myself astraddle on the stile, not fully grasping all the
implications of these words. But they perplexed me even more than
the revolver and my dirty cuff.

About me now the birds lifted up their little hearts and sang, ever
more birds and more.

I read the label over and over again, and joined it to the fact
that I still wore my former clothes, and that my revolver had been
lying at my feet. One conclusion stared out at me. This was no new
planet, no glorious hereafter such as I had supposed. This beautiful
wonderland was the world, the same old world of my rage and death!
But at least it was like meeting a familiar house-slut, washed and
dignified, dressed in a queen's robes, worshipful and fine. . . .

It might be the old world indeed, but something new lay upon all
things, a glowing certitude of health and happiness. It might be
the old world, but the dust and fury of the old life was certainly
done. At least I had no doubt of that.

I recalled the last phases of my former life, that darkling climax
of pursuit and anger and universal darkness and the whirling green
vapors of extinction. The comet had struck the earth and made an
end to all things; of that too I was assured.

But afterward? . . .

And now?

The imaginations of my boyhood came back as speculative possibilities.
In those days I had believed firmly in the necessary advent of a
last day, a great coming out of the sky, trumpetings and fear, the
Resurrection, and the Judgment. My roving fancy now suggested to
me that this Judgment must have come and passed. That it had passed
and in some manner missed me. I was left alone here, in a swept and
garnished world (except, of course, for this label of Swindells')
to begin again perhaps. . . .

No doubt Swindells has got his deserts.

My mind ran for a time on Swindells, on the imbecile pushfulness of
that extinct creature, dealing in rubbish, covering the country-side
with lies in order to get--what had he sought?--a silly, ugly,
great house, a temper-destroying motor-car, a number of disrespectful,
abject servants; thwarted intrigues for a party-fund baronetcy as
the crest of his life, perhaps. You cannot imagine the littleness
of those former times; their naive, queer absurdities! And for
the first time in my existence I thought of these things without
bitterness. In the former days I had seen wickedness, I had
seen tragedy, but now I saw only