To Kill a Mockingbird Chapter 7 Summary

After his adventures at the Radley Place, Jem is in a bad mood for a week, and Scout doesn’t get it, but leaves him alone.
Scout starts second grade, whose only improvement over first grade is that she now gets out of school at the same time as Jem.
Jem finally breaks his silence and tells Scout what happened when he went back to the Radley House: his pants weren’t where he had left them, but were folded up on top of the fence, and the tear in them had been sloppily mended. Jem is thoroughly creeped out by this.
Passing by the knothole tree, they see a ball of twine resting inside it.
Scout wants to take it, but Jem thinks it might be someone’s hiding spot and they should leave it alone.
When the twine is still there after a few days, Jem takes it, and from then on there are no more qualms about taking things found in the knothole.
A few months later, the knothole holds their best find yet: two figures carved out of soap that bear a striking resemblance to Scout and Jem.
Scout throws them on the ground, thinking about voodoo dolls, but Jem rescues them.
They try to figure out who might have made them, but can’t think of anyone with both the skill and the desire to do so.
The knothole haul in the following weeks just keeps getting better and better: a whole pack of chewing gum, a spelling bee medal, and a broken pocket watch (which Jem tries but fails to fix).
Scout and Jem decide to write a letter to their secret benefactor.
The next day, however, they find that the knothole has been filled with cement.
Jem stakes out Mr. Nathan and finally catches him to ask if he was the cement-pourer.
Mr. Nathan says that the tree’s sick and the cement is an attempt to cure it.
Later Jem asks Atticus about the tree, and Atticus says it looks healthy to him, but Mr. Radley should know his own trees.
Jem stands on the porch till it gets dark, and Scout stays with him.
When they finally go inside, Scout thinks Jem looks like he’d been crying, though she hadn’t heard a thing.

Chapter 8

Chapter 6