So they searched for the poison-plants. The woody nightshade they knew very well, having been warned long ago against the berries. It was now only in flower, and it would be some time before there were any berries; but after thinking it over they decided to gather a bundle of stalks, and soak them for the deadly juice. There were stems of arum in the ditches, tipped with green berries. These they thought would do, but shrank from touching. The green looked unpleasant and slimy. Next they hunted for mandragora, of which John Young had given them an account. It grew in waste places, and by the tombs in the churchyard, and shrieked while you pulled it up. This they could not find. Mark said perhaps it wanted an enchanter to discover it, but he gathered a quantity of the dark green milfoil from the grass beside the hedge and paths, and crammed his pockets with it. Some of the lads had told him that it was a deadly poison. It is the reverse--thus reputation varies--for it was used to cure mediaeval sword-cuts. They passed the water-parsnip, unaware of its pernicious qualities, looking for noisome hemlock. “There’s another kind of nightshade,” said Bevis; “because I read about it in that old book indoors, and it’s much stronger than this. We must have some of it.” They looked a long time, but could not find it; and, full of their direful object, did not heed sounds of laughter on the other side of the hedge they were searching, till they got through a gap and jumped into the midst of a group of haymakers resting for lunch. The old men had got a little way apart by themselves, for they wanted to eat like Pan. All the women were together in a “gaggle,” a semicircle of them sitting round a young girl who lounged on a heap of mown grass, with a huge labourer lying full length at her feet. She had a piece of honey suckle in her hand, and he had a black wooden “bottle” near him. There was a courting going on between these two, and all the other women, married and single, collected round them, to aid in the business with jokes and innuendoes. Bevis and Mark instantly recognised in the girl the one who at “Calais” had shown them the road home, and in the man at her feet the fellow who was asleep on the flint heap. Her large eyes, like black cherries--for black eyes and black cherries have a faint tint of red behind them--were immediately bent full on Bevis as she rose and curtseyed to him. Her dress at the throat had come unhooked, and showed the line to which the sun had browned her, and where the sweet clear whiteness of the untouched skin began. The soft roundness of the swelling plum as it ripens filled her common print, torn by briars, with graceful contours. In the shadow of the oak her large black eyes shone larger, loving and untaught. Bevis did not speak. He and Mark were a little taken aback, having jumped through the gap so suddenly from savagery into haymaking. They hastened through a gateway into another field.