She goes to investigate and finds a stick of chewing gum. She wonders if it is poisoned, but she takes the risk and eats it.
On the last day of school, she and Jem find two old Indian head pennies hidden in the same knothole and they decide to keep them.
School ends and another summer approaches and Dill returns to spend the holidays with his aunt.
The three children begin their games again, and on one occasion they find an old tire and Scout curls up inside it and the other two push it down the street. She loses control and the tire rolls right into the Radley's yard and the children panic. However, this episode gives Dill another idea for a game.
They will play Boo Radley and they re-enact the Radley family melodrama until Atticus catches them and warns them not to play it anymore.
Jem and Dill grow closer together, and Scout feels left out so she starts to spend more time with one of their neighbors Miss Maudie Atkinson, a widow with a flair for gardening and baking. Miss Maudie was a childhood friend of Atticus and his brother Jack and she explains to Scout that Boo Radley is very much alive and not a ghost and is merely the victim of a very harsh father. Miss Maudie remembers Boo, as being always polite and friendly and that most of the rumors about him are false. He was not crazy as a boy, but he probably is now. .
Jem and Dill decide to sneak over to the Radley place and peek in through a loose shutter. Scout joins them and they creep around the house peering in through various windows. Suddenly a shadow of a man with a hat on appears and they run for their lives, hearing a shotgun go off behind them, but Jem loses his pants in the process as he climbs over the fence. .
Chapters 6, 7 and 8.
Summary.
The children return home to find the neighborhood adults assembled, brought out of their homes by the sound the of the shotgun. They include Atticus, Miss Maudie and Miss Stephanie Crawford. The gossiping Crawford tells the children that Nathan Radley has shot at a Negro in his yard.