So it was only Barnabas who was at home, not he himself. But why had they come here? K. drew Barnabas aside and asked: “Why have you come here? Or do you live in the Castle precincts?” “The Castle precincts?” repeated Barnabas, as if he did not understand. “Barnabas,” said K. , “you left the inn to go to the Castle.” “No,” said Barnabas, “I left it to come home, I don’t go to the Castle till the early morning, I never sleep there.” “Oh,” said K. , “so you weren’t going to the Castle, but only here”⁠—the man’s smile seemed less brilliant, and his person more insignificant⁠—“Why didn’t you say so?” “You didn’t ask me, sir,” said Barnabas, “you only said you had a message to give me, but you wouldn’t give it in the inn parlour, or in your room, so I thought you could speak to me quietly here in my parents’ house. The others will all leave us if you wish⁠—and, if you prefer, you could spend the night here. Haven’t I done the right thing?” K. could not reply. It had been simply a misunderstanding, a common, vulgar misunderstanding, and K. had been completely taken in by it. He had been bewitched by Barnabas’ close-fitting, silken-gleaming jacket, which, now that it was unbuttoned, displayed a coarse dirty grey shirt patched all over, and beneath that the huge muscular chest of a labourer. His surroundings not only corroborated all this but even emphasised it, the old gouty father who progressed more by the help of his groping hands than by the slow movements of his stiff legs, and the mother with her hands folded on her bosom, who was equally incapable of any but the smallest steps by reason of her stoutness. Both of them, father and mother, had been advancing from their corner towards K. ever since he had come in, and were still a long way off. The yellow-haired sisters, very like each other and very like Barnabas, but with harder features than their brother, great strapping wenches, hovered round their parents and waited for some word of greeting from K. But he could not utter it. He had been persuaded that in this village everybody meant something to him, and indeed he was not