Steel will not slay, poison will not destroy, nor water drown Sybilla de Thouars till her work be done!" Sholto escaped from the power of her eye.
"My master--" he gasped, "my master--is he well?
I pray you tell me." Was it a laugh he heard in answer?
Rather a sound, not of human mirth but as of a condemned spirit laughing deep underground.

Then again the low even voice replied out of the expressionless face.
"Aye, your master is well." "Ah, thank God," burst forth Sholto, "he is alive." The Lady Sybilla moved her hand this way and that with the gesture of a blind man groping.
"Hush," she said, "I only said that he was well.

And he is well.

As I am already in the place of torment, I know that there is a heaven for those who die as William Douglas died." Sholto's cry rang sudden, loud, despairing.
"Dead--dead--Earl William dead--my master dead!" He dropped the palfrey's rein, which till now he had held.

His sword fell unheeded on the turf, and he flung himself down in an agony of boyish grief.