“Where d’ ye hear these things?” Mags asked, both amused and puzzled. Amused because at least he wouldn’t have to figure out some way of telling the story without revealing how he had learned it.

“Bards hear everything, because anything could lead to a new song,” she replied, now actually eating instead of shoving her food about on the plate.

“And Bards gossip worse than a pack of old women,” Bear added, but with a smile. “Do you really think it’s a ghost?”

“Well, I ’spect they do,” Mags put in. “They sure act like it.”

“I can’t think of why something like that would happen otherwise.” Lena’s eyes were shining now. “There aren’t any classes for another two days, I am going to poke around and see what else I can find out. A mystery! I love mysteries!”

Now that she had cheered up, Mags felt it was a good time to give her the present he had gotten her. He reached into his tunic and brought out the pretty little wooden box that Lydia had helped him pick out to hold it. “Went t’ the Midwinter Market. Jakyr come in late an’ only stayed a day, I reckon ’e felt guilty, so ’e give me some money an’ I reckoned I’d get ye both summut. So . . . ’ere.” He handed her the box, which had a harp carved on the top of it. She exclaimed over the pretty thing, then opened it. Mags was very pleased with that find, which had been a stroke of pure luck. Just as there were merchants who tried to pass off inferior articles as more valuable than they were, there were also those who didn’t know what they had. He had found, in a secondhand dealer’s booth, this very pretty string of deep red beads. The merchant thought they were glass, but his expert eye had seen that they were, in fact, garnets.

“Oh, Mags!” She pulled the beads out of the box and ran them through her fingers. “Please tell me they didn’t cost you a fortune!”

“Bah, this’s me!” he scoffed. “I got help bargainin’.” In fact, it had been Lydia who helped him bargain for that, and for the pretty carved wooden charms he had attached to all the page-markers. “I still got coin fer me.”

Thus reassured, she flung her arms around his neck and hugged him quickly. “It’s so pretty! And Bardic Scarlet, too! Thank you!”

“Show ’er yer mitts, Bear,” Mags urged, and Bear displayed his mittens. “Can’t have his precious fingers froze, now c’n we?” he teased, and she laughed.