“Good evening, chief clerk,” somebody called back. “Is there anything wrong?” “No, no,” answered K., “it's only a dog yelping in the yard.” There was no sound from the servitors so he added, “You can go back to what you were doing.” He did not want to become involved with a conversation with them, and so he leant out of the window. A little while later, when he looked out in the corridor, they had already gone. Now, K. remained at the window, he did not dare go back into the junk room, and he did not want to go home either.

The yard he looked down into was small and rectangular, all around it were offices, all the windows were now dark and only those at the very top caught a reflection of the moon. K tried hard to see into the darkness of one corner of the yard,