died, and upon Mr. Taufer's remarriage, to another
Portuguese, the adopted daughter and Mr. Taufer's own child were
equally sharers of his home.

This girl had known Rizal, "the Spanish doctor," as he was called
there, in Hongkong, and persuaded her adopted father that possibly
the Dapitan exile might restore his lost eyesight. So with the two
girls and his wife, Mr. Taufer set out for Mindanao. At Manila his
own daughter fell in love with a Filipino engineer, a Mr. Sunico,
now owner of a foundry in Manila, and, marrying, remained there. But
the party reached Dapitan with its original number, for they were
joined by a good-looking mestiza from the South who was unofficially
connected with one of the canons of the Manila cathedral.

Josefina Bracken, the Irish girl, was lively, capable and of congenial
temperament, and as there no longer existed any reason against his
marriage, for Rizal considered his political days over, they agreed
to become husband and wife.

The priest was asked to perform the ceremony, but said the Bishop
of Cebu must give his consent, and offered to write him. Rizal at
first feared that some political retraction would be asked, but
when assured that only his religious beliefs would be investigated,
promptly submitted a statement which Father Obach says covered about
the same ground as the earliest published of the retractions said to
have been made on the eve of Rizal's death.

This document, inclosed with the priest's letter, was ready for the
mail when Rizal came hurrying in to reclaim it. The marriage was off,
for Mr. Taufer had taken his family and gone to Manila.

The explanation of this sudden departure was that, after the blind
man had been told of the impossibility of anything being done for his
eyes, he was informed of the proposed marriage. The trip had already
cost him one daughter, he had found that his blindness was incurable,
and now his only remaining daughter, who had for seventeen years
been like his own child, was planning to leave him. He would have to
return to Hongkong hopeless and accompanied only by a wife he had
never seen, one who really was merely a servant. In his despair he
said he had nothing to live for, and, seizing his razor, would have
ended his life had not Rizal seized him just in time and held him,
with the firm grasp his athletic training had given him, till the
commandant came and calmed the excited blind man.

It resulted in Josefina returning to Mani