Chapter 7

After the Radley yard incident, Jem stays withdrawn for a week. On a walk home from school, Jem finally confides to Scout that when he returned for his pants, they had been crudely sewn and neatly folded over the fence, as if someone expected his return. This unsettles Jem, who fears being observed by someone who knows him well.

Passing the Radley oak, Scout and Jem notice gray twine in the knothole. They leave it for days to see if it belongs to someone; when it remains, they claim it. As school drags on, they keep checking the tree. In October they find soap carvings—uncannily accurate figures of a boy and a girl that resemble Jem and Scout—followed by a package of gum, a tarnished spelling medal, and then a broken pocket watch on a chain with a knife.

The personal nature and growing value of the items convince Jem and Scout to write a thank-you note to the unknown giver. They compose it and plan to place it in the knothole the next morning.

When they arrive, the knothole has been filled with cement. Distressed, Jem questions Nathan Radley, who says he plugged the hole because the tree is dying. Later, Atticus, asked casually by Jem, observes the tree’s leaves look healthy, though he defers to Nathan’s authority over his property.

That evening, Jem stands on the porch in quiet turmoil and eventually cries. The children lose a mysterious, kind connection that had been forming, and Jem seems to grasp the deliberate nature of the cutoff more deeply than Scout.