Suddenly, from one of his mother’s letters, he found that he had been in France almost three months. He stiffened with the thought and remembered what Hoyt had told him that day he had come: “I’ve been here three months. When I came, I came just as you did to-day--pucka green.” He knew then that all his hopes were false. He was the same to-day as he had been that first day. He would always be the same. The spot of fear would always be with him. Some day it would swell and choke him and his hands would function without his frozen brain. He should never have tried to fly. He should have gone into the infantry as his brother had. Too much imagination--too little something. In three months he had learned the ropes, that was all; how to fire and when to fire, where the Archie batteries were near Cambrai, how to ride a cloud and crawl into it--nothing more. The weeks went on, creeping closer and closer to the twenty-first of March--the twenty-first of March--and with them the feeling crept into Paterson’s heart--a feeling that something frightful was to happen. Things had been quiet so long and casualties had been few. C Flight hadn’t been touched in weeks. He brooded over the thought and slept badly. He went to Amiens with P-B more frequently. If it was to be any of the three, he knew he wouldn’t be able to stand it. His bulwark would crumble and break and he would break with it. On the dawn patrols, those few minutes before they climbed into the cockpits and took off were agony: “This will be the day. It must be to-day. We can’t go on this way. Our luck will break.” One day when they were escorting 119, four dots dived on them from behind and he knew suddenly what he would do. Stark, logically, the thing stood before him and beckoned through the wires of his centre section. If a shot hit his plane, he would go down. They were far over the lines, taking 110 on a bombing show. He would wabble down slowly, pushing his joy stick from side to side in a slow ellipse as if he were out of control. Then he would land and run his nose into the ground and be taken prisoner. The others would see him and swear that he’d been hit--and he wouldn’t do it until his machine had been hit. That for his own conscience’s sake and for the years he would have to live afterwards. But A Flight, behind and far above, saw the dots and scattered them, and the chance was gone. Then day by day he waited for another. He knew now that he would do it at the first opportunity. He slept better with the thought, and the minutes seemed shorter now while he waited at dawn for his bus to be run out. All the details were worked out in his mind. If any one of the three were close to him, he’d throw up his hands wildly before he started down. They’d see that and report it. Then when he landed he’d pull out the flare quick and burn his machine so that they would think he had crashed and caught fire. It was so easy!