According to a couple of articles that I cut out of the Toronto _Globe and Mail_ in 1991, the story of the Huck ms. goes something like this: At the request of James Fraser Gluck, a Buffalo lawyer, Twain gave the second half of the ms. to the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library in 1885. At the time, Twain himself could not find the first half; but two years later, Gluck wrote Twain that the first half had arrived. This first half apparently stayed in Gluck's (rather than the library's) possession, however, and did not resurface until 1990, whe two of Gluck's grandaughters found it in a steamer trunk in an attic in Hollywood (it is believed that Gluck's daughter took the ms. from Buffalo to Hollywood in the 1920s). As of 1991, the library was arguing that since the ms. had orignially been offered to them by Twain, it was their property; the sisters initially were willing to surrender the ms. for a charitable deduction on their income tax, but (reading between the lines, and taking into account Twain's pessimism about human morality!) but changed their minds when they realized its value (about 1.5 million). The articles report that Sotheby's auction house, who holds the ms. itself, has asked the District Court to settle the dispute between the sisters and the library. I have no idea how the court battle turned out, or how Random House came into the picture--perhaps someone else could fill in the next chapter? Nick Mount Dalhousie