Note 1 — Chapter XV · THE KATIPUNAN

This came about after a strange fashion. All this time he had been faithful to the memory of Leonora.1 A few months after he had taken up his residence in Dapitan there came thither a patient from Hong-Kong named Taufer, an American engineer, blind, and drawn to Dapitan by the fame of the great oculist.2 He had with him his adopted daughter Josefina, who promptly fell in love with Rizal. Her real name was Josephine Bracken; her parentage was Irish. Her father had been a non-commissioned officer in the British army and stationed at Hong-Kong. When he died he left a large family in extreme poverty. Taufer, who was a kindly man of some means, adopted the youngest child as a matter of charity and then grew to love her as if she had been his own daughter. For seventeen years she had been his daily companion; in the long night of his blindness she was his guide and comforter.