Khâlid lost no time in repairing to Medina. He went up straightway to the Great Mosque, and entered it in his rough field costume, his clothes rubbed rusty with his girded armour, and his turban coiled rudely about the head with arrows stuck in it. As he passed along the courtyard towards the Caliph’s place, Omar could not restrain himself, but seizing the arrows from his turban, broke them over his shoulders, and abused him as hypocrite, murderer, and adulterer. Khâlid, not knowing but that Abu Bekr might be of the same mind, answered not a word, but passed into the Caliph’s presence. There he told his story, and the explanation was accepted by Abu Bekr;--only he chided him roughly for having thus incontinently wedded his victim’s widow, and run counter to the custom and feelings of the Arabs in celebrating his nuptials on the field. As Khâlid again passed Omar, he lightly rallied him in words which showed that he had been exonerated. Motammim then pressed the claim, as one of honour, for payment of his brother’s blood-money, and release of the prisoners that remained. For the release Abu Bekr gave command, but the payment he declined. [Sidenote: but held guilty by Omar.] Omar remained unconvinced of the innocence of Khâlid, and still was of opinion that he should be withdrawn from his command. He persevered in pressing this view upon Abu Bekr, who would reply, ‘Omar, hold thy peace! Refrain thy tongue from Khâlid. He gave an order, and the order was misunderstood.’ But Omar heeded not. He neither forgave nor forgot, as in the sequel we shall see. [Sidenote: Mâlik’s death commemorated in verse by his brother.] The scandal was the greater, because Mâlik ibn Noweira was a chief renowned for his generosity and princely virtues, as well as for poetic talent. His brother, Motammim, a poet likewise of no mean fame, commemorated his tragic end in many touching verses. Omar loved to listen to his elegies; and he used to tell Motammim that if he had himself possessed the poetic gift, he would have had no higher ambition than to mourn in such verse over the fate of his own brother Zeid, who shortly after fell at Yemâma.[46] [Sidenote: The affair leaves a stain on Khâlid’s fame.] The materials are too meagre to judge conclusively whether the right in this grave matter is on the side of Omar or of the Caliph, Abu Bekr. Although the hostile bias of Khâlid against Mâlik led undoubtedly to the raid upon his tribe and the harsh treatment which followed thereupon, still, with the conflicting evidence, we may hold the deeper charge unproven. But in wedding the widow of his enemy while his blood (shed as we are to believe in misconception of his order) was fresh upon the ground, Khâlid, if he gave no colour to darker suspicions, yet transgressed the proprieties even of Arab life, and justified the indictment of unbridled passion and cold-blooded self-indulgence.[47] CHAPTER VII.