the evening of August nineteenth, when the parish
priest of Tondo was informed by the mother-superior of one of the
convent-schools that she had just learned of a plot to massacre all
the Spaniards. She had the information from a devoted pupil, whose
brother was a compositor in the office of the _Diario de Manila_. As
is so frequently the case in Filipino families, this elder sister was
the purse-holder, and the brother's insistent requests for money,
which was needed by him to meet the repeated assessments made on
the members as the critical hour approached, awakened her curiosity
and suspicion to such an extent that she forced him to confide the
whole plan to her. Without delay she divulged it to her patroness,
who in turn notified the curate of Tondo, where the printing-office
was located. The priest called in two officers of the Civil Guard, who
arrested the young printer, frightened a confession out of him, and
that night, in company with the friar, searched the printing-office,
finding secreted there several lithographic plates for printing
receipts and certificates of membership in the Katipunan, with a
number of documents giving some account of the plot.

Then the Spanish population went wild. General Ramon Blanco was
governor and seems to have been about the only person who kept his
head at all. He tried to prevent giving so irresponsible a movement a
fictitious importance, but was utterly powerless to stay the clamor
for blood which at once arose, loudest on the part of those alleged
ministers of the gentle Christ. The gates of the old Walled City,
long fallen into disuse, were cleaned and put in order, martial law
was declared, and wholesale arrests made. Many of the prisoners were
confined in Fort Santiago, one batch being crowded into a dungeon
for which the only ventilation was a grated opening at the top, and
one night a sergeant of the guard carelessly spread his sleeping-mat
over this, so the next morning some fifty-five asphyxiated corpses
were hauled away. On the twenty-sixth armed insurrection broke out at
Caloocan, just north of Manila, from time immemorial the resort of bad
characters from all the country round and the center of brigandage,
while at San Juan del Monte, on the outskirts of the city, several
bloody skirmishes were fought a few days later with the _Guardia
Civil Veterana_, the picked police force.

Bonifacio had been warned of the discovery of his schemes in time to
make his escape