Within the darkness of the hood, Scrooge cannot even see a hint of the ghost's face. Scrooge speaks to the ghost explaining that he is ready to see what the ghost has to show him, but the ghost does not reply.
Scrooge is frightened by the ghost's silence.
The city appears before Scrooge as if it sprang up around him, and the ghost's hand directs Scrooge to listen to the conversation of several groups of men in the streets. Scrooge hears them talk of a man who died that morning and they say that no one will go to the funeral because he had no friends. In all the people on the street, Scrooge cannot find his own face. He doesn't understand how the snippets of overheard conversation relate to him, but he pays close attention because he knows that there is some lesson for him to learn from all of it. Then the spirit shows him a poorer part of the city where three people gather with bundles of things that they have stolen from the dead man's house to sell.