An attendant brought him the heading cup of wine, which it was the custom to offer to those about to die upon the scaffold.
"Drink it not," said Earl William, "lest they say it was drugged." And David Douglas bowed his head upon the block, being only in the fifteenth year of his age.
"Farewell, brother," he said, "be not long after me.

It is a darksome road to travel so young." "Fear not, Davie lad," said William Douglas, tenderly, "I will overtake you ere you be through the first gate." He turned a little aside that he might not see his brother die, and even as he did so he saw the Lady Sybilla lean upon the balcony paler than the dead.
Then when it came to his turn they offered the Earl William also the heading cup filled with the rich wine of Touraine, his own fair province that he was never to see.
He lifted the cup high in his right hand with a knightly and courtly gesture.

Looking towards the balcony whereon stood the Lady Sybilla, he bowed to her.
"I drink to you, my lady and my love," he cried, in a voice loud and clear.
Then, touching but the rim of the goblet with his lips, he poured out the red wine upon the ground.
* * * * * And thus passed the gallantest gentleman and truest lover in whom God ever put heart of grace to live courteously and die greatly, keeping his faith in his lady even against herself, and holding death itself sweet because that in death she loved him..