Read the following excerpt from "i sell a dog" by mark twain. i remember a time when a shortage occurred; we had to have three dollars, and we had to have it before the close of the day. i don't know now how we happened to want all that money at one time; i only know we had to have it. swinton told me to go out and find it and he said he would also go out and see what he could do. he didn't seem to have any doubt that we would succeed but . . i hadn't the same confidence; i hadn't any idea where to turn to raise all that bullion and i said so. as it is used in this excerpt, what do you think the word bullion means? what context clues you determine the meaning of this word in the excerpt? be sure to use specific details from the text to support your answer.

He leaned his head against the wall; his eyes were shut, his hands clasped in each other, and his body seemed to be sustained in an upright position merely by the cellar-door against which he rested his left shoulder. the lethargy into which he was sunk seemed scarcely interrupted by my feeling his hand and his forehead. his throbbing temples and burning skin indicated a fever . . there was only one circumstance that hindered me from forming an immediate determination in what manner this person should be treated. my family consisted of my wife and a young child. our servant-maid had been seized, three days before, by the reigning malady, and, at her own request, had been conveyed to the hospital. we ourselves enjoyed good health, and were hopeful of escaping with our lives. our measures for this end had been cautiously taken and carefully adhered to. they did not consist in avoiding the receptacles of infection, for my office required me to go daily into the midst of them; nor in filling the house with the exhalations of gunpowder, vinegar, or tar. they consisted in cleanliness, reasonable exercise, and wholesome diet. who is the story’s first-person narrator