Soon after Malcolm had thus established his grandson in the northern extremity of his kingdom, an opportunity again occurred for extending his dominions on the Northumbrian frontier, which ever since the days of Indulf had been the object of the aggressions of the Scottish kings. The sceptre of a great nation was fast escaping from the feeble grasp of Ethelred, and Uchtred, the opponent of Malcolm’s earlier years, after twice submitting to the Danish invaders, had been put to death with the connivance of Canute from mingled motives of policy and revenge.[117] The guardianship of the northern frontiers then fell into the hands of Eadulf Cudel, the imitator of the supineness of his father Waltheof, rather than of the energy of his brother Uchtred. He could expect but little assistance from the Yorkshire Danes, who upon the death of Uchtred had been placed under the authority of their countryman Eric, and as the distracted state of Northumbria was not lost upon Malcolm, twelve years after his former disaster, collecting his followers for a second invasion, he prepared to exact a fearful retribution for the trophies mouldering around the walls of Durham. [Sidenote: A. D. 1018.] During thirty days and nights, a comet, a baleful and ill-omened prodigy in the eyes of the Northumbrians of the eleventh century, blazed forth, a presage of impending woe; and when the men of St. Cuthbert’s joined their countrymen at Carham, on the banks of the Tweed, it was only to participate in the disasters of a defeat, and to perish in multitudes in a disorderly flight. The aged bishop sunk under the shock, dying within a few days of the battle, and such was the confusion throughout the diocese of St. Cuthbert’s that for three years no successor was elected. Despairing of resistance against the power of the conqueror, Eadulf Cudel purchased an inglorious peace at the price of relinquishing Lothian, the whole of ancient Bernicia beyond the Tweed was ceded to the Scottish king, and Malcolm returned in triumph to the north, having effectually obliterated the remembrance of his failure by a more brilliant and substantial success than any of his predecessors had hitherto achieved.[118] [Sidenote: A. D. 1031.]