No one knows why Boo Radley left the gifts in the knothole for Jem and Scout, but perhaps Scout explained it best in Chapter 31. It was because Boo was "our neighbor."
Neighbors bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. But neighbors give in return. We never put back into the tree what we took out of it: we had given him nothing, and it made me sad.
Scout's great wish finally comes true when she sees Boo for the first time. He had "sickly white hands that had never seen the sun... His face was as white as his hands... His cheeks were thin to hollowness... his grey eyes were so colorless I thought he was blind. His hair was dead and thin..." (Chapter 29)
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