title: A Still Place: One Woman's Journey Home
author: Nancy Lankston
description: Nancy Lankston first fell in love with writing and nature as a young child growing up in the wilds of Kansas. She currently lives and works in the Midwest where she divides her time between writing and a private therapy practice as a nurse-healer.
zlib_text: ![](images/00001.jpg)
  
  
  ##### www.blackmask.com
  
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  #### Half a Life-Time Ago
  
  
  Chapter I
  
  Chapter II
  
  Chapter III
  
  Chapter IV
  
  Chapter V
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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  # Half a Life-Time Ago
  
  
  ### Elizabeth Gaskell
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER I.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Half a life-time ago, there lived in one of the Westmoreland dales a
  
  
  single woman, of the name of Susan Dixon. She was owner of the small
  
  
  farm-house where she resided, and of some thirty or forty acres of
  
  
  land by which it was surrounded. She had also an hereditary right to
  
  
  a sheep-walk, extending to the wild fells that overhang Blea Tarn.
  
  
  In the language of the country she was a Stateswoman. Her house is
  
  
  yet to be seen on the Oxenfell road, between Skelwith and Coniston.
  
  
  You go along a moorland track, made by the carts that occasionally
  
  
  came for turf from the Oxenfell. A brook babbles and brattles by the
  
  
  wayside, giving you a sense of companionship, which relieves the deep
  
  
  solitude in which this way is usually tra